§ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. | 



Chap. ..."B_k._L:?./-^ 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. \ 





. 7 . -iuU 



V 



THE 



THEOLOGICAL VAMPIRE 

u 

EXPOSED. 



IN A SERIES OF LECTURES 



SHOWING THAT 

THE. MIRACULOUS MYTHOLOGY OF CHRISTIANITY 

HAD FOR PROTOTYPE, THE THEOLOGY OF 

THE ANCIENT PAGANS. 



For with strong speech I tore the veil that hid 
Nature, and Truth, and Liberty. 

Laon and Cvthxa. 



LONDON: 

PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR, BY 

JOHN BROOKS, 421 OXFORD STREET. 

MDCCCXXXIII. 



C^-|L*4 



PREFACE. 



I A great and learned prelate of the Church of England 
has declared that 6 authority is the greatest and most 
irreconcileable enemy to truth and rational argument 
that this world ever furnished out since it was in being; — 
against it there is no defence : — it is authority alone 
that keeps up the grossest and most abominable errors in 
the countries around us : it was authority that would 
have prevented all reformation where it is, and which has 
put a barrier against it where it is not.' Here are five 
luminous truths, expressed in the most simple and laconic 
manner: yet the philosopher, who studies nature, and 
follows truth ought not to be discouraged on account of 
this formidable antagonist ; he must have the firmness to 
speak the truth boldly for the sake of the few who are 
capable and willing to think for themselves ; for, unless 
we are allowed to endeavour to convince others of the 
truth of our opinions, all teaching may as well be laid 
aside : but as for the bulk of mankind, who take human 
fictions and fancies for heavenly instructions, and who 



IV PREFACE. 

are the voluntary slaves of prejudices, error, and supersti- 
tion, they are as incapable of discerning the truth as frogs 
are of flying. 

The rational and virtuous education of youth can 
never take place in countries where the mind of man is 
enslaved by authority, and where the ecclesiastics, who 
have an opposite and exclusive interest, engross not only 
the education of youth, but keep the consciences of old 
men under their control, and being backed by the false 
zeal and ignorance of the people, the few who have 
penetration and judgment are obliged to give way to the 
prevailing absurdities. We are exceedingly apt and 
ready in condemning the ridiculous creeds of other na- 
tions, while our own contains as great, if not greater 
absurdities, to which, nevertheless, we give the most 
implicit assent ; the articles of our faith and creeds being 
handed down from our predecessors, and to which we 
have the title of tradition only. The greater the 
ignorance and folly of the people, the more easily will 
they be imposed upon by crafty mystagogues, and when 
the latter have really no religion, (perhaps a very common 
case), and the former abound in the wild zeal of the 
fanatic, the church, we may rest assured, is in a flourish- 
ing condition. But all systems founded on notions of 
preternatural revelation, are in great danger when men 



PREFACE. V 

place their religion in virtue and sound morality ; for 
then the people have no bigoted veneration for the 
' Sacerdotal Stole,' and priests would be held in no esti- 
mation, except in as far as they set the example of 
virtuous habits, in promoting the moral good of society :* 
but wherever morality is not made the ground-work of 
religion, they have succeeded in making the people 
believe that eternal happiness can be dispensed by them 
alone, or at least through their means; and in thus 
getting the management of what they call spirituals in 
their own hands, the highest degree of temporal ad- 
vantage has necessarily followed, and in this latter point 
they have succeeded so admirably, that in almost all the 
Christian countries of Europe, the temporal interest of the 
priesthood is mistaken, and passes for the soul-saving 
spiritual interest of the laity. 

* Instead of a theological, men should be taught a natural 
morality, — instead of interdicting intemperance and vice, because 
they are offensive to God and religion, they should be prevented by 
convincing man that they are destructive to his existence, and 
render him contemptible in society; that they are disapproved and 
forbidden by reason and nature, who aim at his preservation, and 
direct him to take the path that leads to permanent felicity ; and 
independently of the future rewards and punishments announced 
by religion, it is easy to prove to every man that it is in this world 
his interest to preserve his health, to respect virtue, acquire the 
esteem of his fellow creatures, and, in fine, to be chaste, temperate, 
and virtuous. — Ecce Homo. 



VI PREFACE. 

We all have sufficient means of knowing how widely 
the Christian world differ in the religion they teach ; 
what absurd revolutions of opinion have been amongst 
them, and the horrid scenes of inhuman cruelty which 
these differences have occasioned ; what monstrous ab- 
surdities prevail in most places, and what excessive 
ignorance everywhere; — the madness of inventing a 
revelation to patch up what they call the defects of 
reason, and again super-adding reason to supply the 
defects of revelation. 

When we duly consider these melancholy realities, 
and the sad evils they produce, we are warranted in 
asserting that such a state of things would not be 
tolerated or endured amongst men, were they not com* 
pelled by that power and authority which the Church 
derives from its pernicious connection with the State ; 
for it was one of the grandest points ever effected by the 
clergy of any country in former times, to get their super- 
stition made ' part and parcel of the law of the land/ 
This was clenching the fetters upon men's minds, for 
whoever ventured to attack the knavish absurdities of 
the priest,* was punished by the civil magistrate : and 
thus the honest and the virtuous became sufferers for 

* Scioppius gives us this definition of a Catholic church : — * We 
are/ says he, * a stall, or herd, or multitude of beasts and asses, 



PREFACE. Vll 

obeying their reason in preference to revelation, it 
appearing to them more certain that God is the author 
of human reason, than that he is the author of any- 
particular book. It is perfectly amazing that it should 
enter the head of any man to suppose that he has, or can 
possibly have, a right to dictate to others in matters of 
opinion, and still more so that men should be so weak as 
to admit and allow of such tyranny: yet such is the 
credulity of those who have never been allowed to think 
for themselves, that the clergy find it an easy task to 
impose any thing upon the obedient people, if they 
recommend it with a convenient gravity and solemnity ; 
this holds good with respect to all religions, whatever 
may be their component parts, for if we take a look into 
Pagan or Christian traditions, we shall find that their 
Theological legends were chiefly composed of Mytho- 
logical fables, — the Jews copying from the Egyptians, 
Phenicians, and Chaldeans ; and the Christians, after the 
second century, when the primitive principles of the 
Son of Mary no longer existed, imitated all of them in 
the way of parody. 



and they (the priests) bridle us, they saddle us, they harness us, 
they spur us, they lay yokes and burdens upon us.' I will add, that 
our own priests would do all that Scioppius complains of, if they 
had the power. 



Vlll PREFACE. 

The ancient Egyptians, from the use of hieroglyphics 
in their religious ceremonies, gradually introduced the 
greatest absurdities ; — the Ox, that patient and laborious 
animal, was at first nothing more than a symbolical 
representation of the means by which the earth was 
cultivated ; but this-simple idea was afterwards forgotten 
in the ignorance of the people, who began in downright 
earnest to adore the beast itself; — in like manner, but 
with still greater absurdity, we of modern times, having 
created our deity, degrade him into a similitude with 
ourselves, and then we eat and drink him ! ! ! 

The hierophants, or religious impostors of antiquity, 
taught their silly followers to adore female deities, who, 
by their own account, were guilty of every species of 
debauchery, — to worship goddesses greatly inferior to 
the courtesans. Such in every age has been the true 
character of all those traffickers in divine commodities, 
or preternatural deceptions, that whenever any chimera, 
no matter how shameful and humiliating to reason, was 
adopted, and suited their interest, they would never 
allow themselves to be undeceived, but imagined a 
thousand wretched shifts, rather than abandon the most 
palpable error : but this is not to be wondered at, since 
they live by the weakness and folly of the bulk of 
mankind. 



PREFACE. IX 

To multiply human virtues depends upon societies 
well ordered and regulated by good laws, to nourish and 
protect those virtues ; — instead of which, the most effec- 
tual means are most commonly applied to ends that are 
of all others the least to be desired, and every vigilance 
and anxious care is taken to instil in early youth non- 
sensical creeds which of necessity can have no other 
ground to rest upon than the supposed knowledge and 
veracity of those deeply-interested teachers ; and it is 
too certain that in this predicament, a very large 
majority of our fellow creatures continue to be children 
all their lives. Partly from an indolence of mind, and 
partly from a superstitious timidity, they never once 
attempt to examine matters thoroughly, but contentedly 
take up with such notions, right or wrong, as their 
instructors see their own interest in adopting for them 
and what thus begins in faith cannot end in reason. 
It is obvious therefore that the pliant, passive belief of 
this vast majority of mankind, must be entirely at the 
discretion of the ruling powers in church and state, and 
consequently, should these powers adopt a new religion, 
with rituals and creeds diametrically opposite to the 
present, the mass* of the people would go on to think 

* St Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers, says, ' since the Nicene Synod, 
we have done nothing but write creeds, while we fight about words, 



X PREFACE. 

themselves bound to believe in the manner prescribed 
by authority ; or in whatsoever way their godfathers and 
godmothers had engaged for them to believe; — and 
hereby the ignominious fetters of mental slavery are 
rivetted, although there is nothing in the case that has 
any thing to do with belief, properly so called, because, 
that which alone deserves that name, is the result of a 
full and satisfactory conviction of the judgment; and 
for any man to say that he believes in that which he 
never allowed himself to examine thoroughly, is as 
direct a falsehood as it is possible for him to utter. 

Any thing in the form of apology for self-evident truths, 
cannot have any effect on these who have so little sense 
as to deny them : — they are the foundation of all reason- 
ing, and the only just bottom on which men can proceed 
in convincing one another, and by consequence, whoever 
is capable of denying them, is not in a condition to be 
informed, and under such a distempered state of mind, it 
remains only for them to follow their own disordered 
fancies, or what is more common, to be guided by the 



and quarrel about things doubtful ; we decree every year of the 
lord, a new creed concerning God ; nay, every change of the moon 
our faith is altered. We repent of our decrees,' (as we have made 
God repent of his), ' we defend those who have repented of them, 
and we anathematize those we have defended.' 



PREFACE. XI 

dictates of artful, and deeply interested men ; or by crazy- 
brained fanatics, for as truth will never serve the purposes 
of knaves, so it will never suit the understanding of 
fools ; and the latter will ever be as well pleased in 
being deceived, as the former in deceiving : and when 
we consider that private interest is a more formidable 
enemy to truth than ignorance, and that in the present 
case, its chief security consists in the fostering of igno- 
rance, the prospect of any very considerable mental 
improvement amongst the bulk of mankind, is greatly 
darkened, and almost hopeless, for this private interest in 
the priesthood creates the love of wealth, avarice, ease, 
and power ; disguised under the imposing robes of the 
order, giving them that ascendancy in society that is well 
calculated to perpetuate these evils; and having igno- 
rance and prejudice as their steady upholders, they are 
likely to continue as they ever have done, fatally to 
mislead the million by subduing their reason, palming 
upon them absurd and unintelligible dogmas as the clear 
and equitable precepts of the Supreme Being, and 
hereby banishing truth and honest sincerity, and conse- 
quently, goodness and virtue, all arising from the foun- 
dation of truth ; for there cannot possibly be any thing 
deserving of the name of goodness, unless it has truth's 
impression. 



Xll PREFACE. 

As the growth of miracles appears most abundant in 

the compilation of what is called the Old Testament, it 

may be observed here, in the prefatory way, that, although 

the Mosaic accounts of the originals of men and things 

are in many instances so perfectly ridiculous as to excite 

our risibility, yet such is the force of custom* and 

pre-instilled opinions, that they are embraced without 

the least scruple or examination ; but if we had read stories 

of a like absurd and incredible nature in the writings of 

one of the early Mahometans, or in those of a Grecian 

philosopher, our minds would have been filled with 

objections, and the relation of each prodigy would have 

met with scorn and sarcasm rather than belief; and how 

can this difference arise, but from the early impression 

that is made on our minds that Moses had heavenly 

inspirations ? 

The title of an atheistical or heretical pamphlet will be 
bestowed upon these lectures by any fiery zealot into 

* « The queen of slaves, 



The hood-winked angel of the blind and dead, 
Custom, with iron mace, points to the graves 
Where her own standard desolately waves 
Over the dust of prophets and of Kings. 
Many yet stand in her array ; she paves 
Her path with human hearts, and o'er it flings 
The wildering gloom of her immeasurable wings. 

Laon and Cvtiina. 



PREFACE. Xlll 

whose hands they may fall ; and under the pretence of 
being a champion for truth, he is supported by ignorance 
and malice as his seconds. But does he know wherein 
the nature of atheism consists ? It would be atheism to 
assert that there is no Almighty Power ruling the universe, 
or to deny the benevolent providence of that power. 
Men holding such opinions as these would be atheists, 
but not so much so as those bigoted fanatics who, building 
upon false premises, continue obstinately in the most 
absurd errors. The unthinking herd of mankind, whose 
superstition is grounded upon the assimilation of the 
Supreme Being with themselves, are apt to think that 
every one they hate is the enemy of the Almighty Power, 
and that all who differ from them in opinion are atheists ; 
not rightly considering that he is the best Christian who 
is the most honest man. And, therefore, if any man 
blames me for comparing Christianity with Paganism, he 
shows nothing but his unworthy distrust of the sufficiency 
of the religion he professes. 



LECTURE I 



Somewhat I would say, 



But fear, — let fear, for once, to truth give way. 

Dryden. 
Thou, reader, who art free from other cares, 
Receive right reason's truth with well purged ears ; 
Lest what I write, and send you for your good, 
Be scorned and damn'd before well understood. 

Lucretius. 



ON MIRACLES. 

It is contrary to nature, to reason, and to all experi- 
ence, that a miracle should be true ; but it is not contrary 
to nature, to reason, or to experience, that a man, or a 
class of men who lived about two thousand years ago, 
should propagate falsehoods : on the contrary, falsehood 
is a coin that has ever been in ready currency amongst 
mankind, and the more outrageous it is against truth 
and common sense, the more readily it has generally 
been received by the ignorant and deluded multitude ; 
because, in things supernatural the weak mind is taken 



2 LECTURE I. 

by surprise, is strongly affected, and adheres, unites, and 
commits itself without ever comprehending them, " and 
it is too late to make use of reason after we have long 
subjected it to the obedience of faith." 

A very profound philosopher has observed that, " A 
miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and as a firm 
and unalterable experience has established these laws, the 
proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, 
is as entire as any argument from experience can possi- 
bly be imagined ; and therefore, no testimony is suffi- 
cient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of 
such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous 
than the fact which it endeavours to establish." — The 
stupendous order of nature, the revolution of hundreds 
of millions of globes or worlds, round a million of suns, 
may be called miraculous, yet in all this nature is still in 
an even and invariable course, acting by self-existing 
laws, immutable and inviolable. If it should be asked, 
" Cannot a law that is established by God himself be 
suspended by its author ?" we reply that it cannot ; for, 
beside the impossibility, there is the highest degree of 
impious arrogance in venturing to suppose that the 
omnipotent all-ruling power would act as men do in 
making laws that were afterwards to be suspended or 
violated . 



ON MIRACLES. 3 

It appears clearly enough that the mass of miraculous 
stuff that has been handed down to us from the early 
times of our holy church, and which we are called upon 
to believe, was manifestly confuted even in those very 
times ; and for this strong reason, some of the primitive 
priests or fathers, viz. Origen, Eusebius of Csesaria, 
Julius Africanus, and others, have taken care to destroy 
or mutilate the works of almost all those philosophers 
and men of learning who lived in or near their own 
times, and who exposed the tricks and legerdemain of 
the early fabricators of our religion, who had even then 
departed entirely from the moral simplicity of the origi- 
nal : they have left us nothing of Berosus, or of Celsus 
the epicurean, except as much of them as it suited their 
ends to quote in their own works ; and as for Manetho, 
Porphyry Symmachus, and others, they are so mutilated 
that we have only fragments of them remaining.* After 
destroying or suppressing the works of those learned 
men whose arguments they could not answer, — after 
making away with such respectable authorities against 

* The books written by the most learned philosophers were 
forbidden, on pretence that they were written by heathens ; and 
the bishops themselves, at the Council of Carthage, about the year 
400, were interdicted the reading of heathen authors ; for they 
said that Saint Jerome himself had been whipped with rods by an 
angel sent expressly from heaven, /w reading Cicero 1 s works. 



/ 



4 LECTURE I. 

their artful and imposing systems, their successors in 
the church now tell us that miracles are no longer 
wanted, but that formerly they were wrought in favour 
of mankind, for the purpose of establishing the Christian 
religion ; but had not all the old religions the same pre- 
tensions to miracles ? Are not the Pagan legends and 
traditions full of them ? And have not a vast number of 
them been imitated and dressed up afresh by the Chris- 
tians ? But the most absurd and extravagant miracle of 
all is to imagine that the supreme power should, in 
favour of a few ants on their little ball of earth, derange 
the operation of those eternal and immutable laws inhe- 
rent in, and inseparable from matter, and which govern 
the vast machinery of the universe. Such departures 
from nature are the delusive ravings of theological art, 
but everything that has not reason in it and for it, is 
man's superstition, and not religion of God's or nature's 
making ; so all religions except that of nature and rea- 
son, bear the impression of man, that is, of fraud and 
falsehood. The favours of that supreme power which 
rules all nature (by nature's laws alone) consist in its 
laws themselves, and therefore to dare to ascribe mira- 
cles, or what is the same thing, fickleness and imbeci- 
lity to it, is an impious insult, allowing for a moment 
that poor miserable man can insult that power so tran- 



ON xMIRACLES. 5 

scendently great as to be altogether beyond his compre- 
hension. 

We have seen that all religions from the highest anti- 
quity have had their miracles, and why should not the 
Christians have theirs also ? for their priests stood as 
much in need of them as did those of the older systems 
of the Pagan religions ; so accordingly they adopted as 
an example the Pagan and Jewish mythology and rites, 
perceiving the immense power and influence that mira- 
cle and mystery held over the vulgar mind ; but this 
species of delusion was everywhere, and in all ages, 
almost wholly confined to the illiterate rabble ; " for all 
the philosophers and historians of Greece and Rome are 
either silent in regard to such fooleries, or treat them 
with derision and contempt ; for these sages were very 
far from admitting the tricks of priests, or the bigotry 
of the lower orders of mankind, as the standard of 
truth." 

It is not only remarkable but surprising, that all na- 
tions who have given up the simplicity of nature, and 
become what is called civilized and polished, have fabri- 
cated books of theological mysteries and prodigies which 
may justly be regarded as the source of the greatest 
evils and calamities experienced by mankind : in them 
we discover the root and germ of intolerance, the ran- 



b LECTURE I. 

corous hatred that springs from the conflicting dogmas 
of priests, the religious wars consequent thereon, and 
the dreadful devastations which superstition, backed by- 
authority, has entailed upon the human raee. This is 
the religion of unnatural prodigies, that has rendered 
men morose and unsociable, gloomy-minded, fierce, and 
cruel; and to act in everything throughout their lives 
with a tendency to all that is destructive of their com- 
mon welfare ; but chiefly in the expedient which they 
have found out, at a vast expense, of hiring persons to 
bewilder reason and common sense. As these religions 
have multiplied, and again been subdivided into sects, 
the erection of more churches entailed so much addi- 
tional expense upon the industry of the people to main- 
tain them, while the black train of evils already noted 
has increased in equal proportion. 

Nothing but reasoning can improve reason, and no 
book can improve my reason in any point, unless it gives 
me convincing proofs of its reasonableness ; and a reve- 
lation that will not suffer us to examine and judge of its 
dictates by our reason, is so far from improving, that it 
forbids the use of reason, and if that faculty is left 
unexercised, it will have as little force as unexercised 
limbs. 

All belief in miracles must necessarily exclude reason 



ON MIRACLES. 7 

and experience, and so general has been the infatuated 
belief in them, that it would be difficult to mention a 
single nation in which the most incredible prodigies have 
not been performed ; and it has always happened that 
the most monstrous and absurd have been invented in 
those countries where the mass of the people had little 
knowledge of reading and writing, and consequently 
they were the secure and easy prey of their spiritual 
lords the priests. Thus we see, that amongst the nume- 
rous systems of revealed religion with which the credu- 
lity of man has been saddled, not one of them has been 
without its code of miracles, and the priests of each have 
invariably denied the truth of every one except their 
own ; and each of these infallible guides will give you 
an unerring rule, one that, according to their own asse- 
veration, cannot err, that is, by an implicit belief by 
faith in the particular doctrine that each of them pro- 
mulgates. Now, that which proceeds from reason and 
common sense, we know to be true, but what proceeds 
from faith is believed only as a sort of obligation.* 

* Neither reason nor study, says Boulanger, are necessary to 
men who submit their judgments to the yoke of faith. From the 
confession of Christians themselves, the founders of their religion 
were simple and ignorant men. Their disciples must be as little 
enlightened as they were, to admit the fables and reveries they 
have received from them. It has always been remarked that the 



8 LECTURE U 

There is a vast difference between knowing and believ- 
ing ; and yet it must be confessed that with the excep- 
tion of that famous old personage, the devil, faith is the 
best working tool in the shop of every priest, for by it 
he secures a blind obedience, but without the former he 
can do nothing whatever ; indeed they are mutually 
necessary to each other, for the devil can do nothing 
without the church, because his dominion and power 
are ever most extensive when the theologians succeed 
in preventing all freedom of inquiry and discussion, 
which they will do while their numbers are multi- 
plied everywhere, and their power enlarged even to the 
use of the temporal sword. Let them therefore lay 
aside the folly of pretending to weaken or destroy his 
Satanic Majesty, whether his existence be real or imagi- 

most enlightened men seldom make the best Christians, — science is 
apt to embarrass faith. If science be serviceable to political society, 
ignorance is much more so to revealed religion and its ministers. 
Those ages destitute of science and industry, were the golden ages 
of the Christian church. Then were kings dutifully submissive to 
priests : then the coffers of priests held all the riches of society. The 
ministers of a very numerous sect have kept from the eyes of their 
followers the sacred pages which contain the laws of their religion. 
This conduct is undoubtedly very discreet ; for reading the bible 
is the surest of all means to prevent its being respected. If in 
fact, the maxims of the Christian religion respecting science were 
rigorously and universally followed, no political society could 
subsist. 



ON MIRACLES. V 

nary, since it is evident that their own interest is mainly 
promoted by increasing his name and power ; and with 
respect to himself, he may rest assured that he would 
cut but a sorry figure in the world were it not for the 
church.* 

The belief in miracles is nearly related to the detes- 
table folly of crediting the foul accusations for witchcraft, 
and in the darker ages, when the church had more 
power, the clergy were commonly the chief promoters 
of the prosecutions against the unhappy and helpless 
creatures who were charged with this imaginary crime, 
the executions of whom cannot be looked upon as any- 
thing else than so many murders; and all good men 
who endeavoured to expose them as such were branded 
by the church as Atheists ; but these, unhappily, being 
very few in number, were quite unequal to the task of 
wresting out of the priests' hands the power of taking 
away so many innocent people's lives and reputations. 

The greatest philosophers of antiquity ranked super- 
stition amongst the vices, making the happiness of man 

* Men vainly imagine they have discovered the principles of 
good and evil by calling the one God and the other Devil, when in 
reality they have only personified these relative terms which are 
expressive of our perceptions; and worship a creature of their own 
imagination, for an immaterial deity exists only in the mind of 
man. 



10 LECTURE I. 

in life to consist in the practice of virtue, and freedom 
from superstition; and on the contrary, the greatest 
misery in life to consist in being vicious, and believing 
in supernaturals. Another great mind amongst the an- 
cients describes superstition as a terrible evil, arising 
from education, or the natural weakness of the human 
mind, oppressing nearly the whole of mankind. If you 
give way to it, says he, it will ever haunt and plague 
you : all the tranquillity of the mind will be destroyed j 
and sleep itself, which seems to be an asylum and refuge 
from all trouble and uneasiness, does by the phantoms of 
superstition increase your troubles and fears. From all 
which evils you can alone be freed by following that 
plain, consistent, and rational system of religion, which 
is obvious in the book of nature, and whose basis is 
truth and morality : all other systems give rise to those 
vicious passions which spring from the clouds of error 
and falsehood. 

In what are called the schools of divinity, youth 
learns to believe in the manner that suits the theolo- 
gian ; but the man of unbiased reflection believes that 
only which appears to him true, and cannot believe 
otherwise ; therefore, belief cannot be a duty, and the 
attempt to make it even meritorious, or the want of it 
criminal, is a downright mark of imposture ; for truth 



ON MIRACLES. 11 

requires only a reasonable conviction, not a blind obedi- 
ence. But if miracles were formerly performed for the 
purpose of converting mankind, and supposing that all 
the believing part of the world had turned infidels, as 
the consequence of their having ceased, yet not a single 
sensible miracle could now be produced to re-save the 
world, or what is more to Christian priests, to save their 
livings and dignities. That the majority of the educated 
in society are still priest-ridden is perfectly evident, 
yet such a fable as the New Testament story of the 
devils and the swine 9 would not in these days be ven- 
tured upon; and if the same crime had been laid 
to the charge of Mahomet in terms so ill judged as to 
confess such atrocious iniquity, he would have been 
branded by your divines as an abominable wizard, inde- 
pendent of the robbery committed On the owners of the 
swine. # The ingenuous and truth-loving Meslier, a 

* It appears that the devils possessing the two demoniacs who 
lived among the tombs, could not be dislodged without terms of 
capitulation, one article of which was that they should be allowed 
to go into the swine. The spokesman of these devils announced 
that he was legion, or called legion, probably from being the chief 
of a detachment consisting of that number. The treaty being con- 
cluded, the devils took possession of their new subjects accord- 
ingly, who, feeling a most devilish commotion within them, com- 
mitted suicide immediately : nor was this rash act wonderful when 
we consider that there were onlv " about two thousand" swine, so 



12 LECTURE I. 

French curate, treats the ridiculous adventure of the devil 
carrying away Jesus to the top of a mountain, the mar- 
riage of Cana, and the story of the loaves and fishes, as 
absurd tales, injurious to the goodness of the Supreme 
Being, and which, for more than the three first centuries, 
were altogether unknown in the Roman empire ; and at 
last brought forward from the lowest dregs of the com- 
munity, and palmed by the priests upon the wicked and 
worthless emperors, after their apostacy from the religion 
of their forefathers ; and when policy compelled them to 
adopt the nonsense and foolish bigotry of the people, in 
order to keep them the better in subjection. 

To rectify abuses that have kept their ground for so 
many centuries, and remove such a host of prejudices so 
long instilled by habit and education, is now become ex- 
ceedingly difficult; for, besides private interest, pride, 
passion, and obstinacy, stand as bulwarks in their de- 
fence, and men will rarely suffer correction in those reli- 
gious points where they think their judgment and good 
sense have been arraigned ; and in the rancour of that 



that there would be the proportion of three devils to each pig, 
reckoning a legion of devils to consist of the same number as a 
Roman legion. I wish that some theologian or commentator would 
inform me whether Jesus or the devils were most guilty in this 
wholesale iiogicide. 



ON MIRACLES. 13 

fanatical hatred,* which of all others is the most deadly, 
they will even condemn reason and the light of nature 
as forming an ignis-fatuus to lead the world to perdi- 
tion. 

In former times, when ignorance was more prevalent 
than it now is, it was believed as certain, that the 
almighty power denounced his anger by means of 
miracle, and other marvellous phenomena, but in these 
times all such appearances are known, even to demon- 
stration, to be common effects of natural causes, de- 
termined by laws that nothing can change ; but still 
the vanity of this sensible, intelligent, thinking being 
called man, in the pride of his heart, believes himself 
to be the sole object of divine predilection, forming his 
God after his own peculiar model ; and hugging himself 

* In the time of that wise heathen philosopher Ammianus Mar- 
cellinus, the Christians bore such hatred to each other, that, as he 
complains, "no beasts were such deadly enemies to men, as the 
more savage Christians were generally to one another." What 
would he have said of them if he had lived in the sixteenth century, 
when in Catholic countries he beheld the princes and nobles proud 
of serving the inquisition in the most inhuman and detestable 
offices, such as carrying with their own hauds the holy faggots for 
the burning of heretics ? Our religion is said to be one of peace ; 
yet upon a moderate calculation it has destroyed in the world nine 
millions seven hundred and eighteen thousand eight hundred per- 
sons, burnt, hanged, drowned, shot, and tortured, all for the love 
of God and the honor of his Son. 



\ 



14 LECTURE I. 

with this favourite notion, he wants no proof of that 
which he wishes to believe ; and we know of no demon- 
stration that is strong enough to prove the falsehood of 
a favourite opinion. But the most monstrous of all the 
miracles that knavery has devised, and folly sanctioned, 
is perhaps the Jewish one, of the creation of matter 
out of nothing, a proposition so unsightly and enormous, 
that the rational mind rejects it at once, as the ravings 
of insanity ; but on the other hand, the reflecting mind 
has no difficulty in the simple idea of the eternity of 
matter ; even the theologian himself must agree that it 
would require one of his miracles to annihilate a single 
atom of matter, yet he will maintain that a being which 
he describes as an immaterial existence, without extent, 
drew from its own source the thousands of globes which 
we behold, and which source is declared to be nothing. 
This is arriving at the acme of absurdity, through the 
wanderings of a distempered fancy, for it is beyond the 
grasp of human intellect to conceive any distinct idea of 
such a being ; but when the light of nature and reason 
are discarded, faith and miracle come readily into play. 
In thus setting aside all miracle and all prodigy, as the 
inventions of knavery to impose upon weak and credu- 
lous minds, it may be asked, " Do you then, when you 
fully allow that there is an omnipotent power which 



ON MIRACLES. 15 

rules everything-, deny that it has the power to work 
miracles if necessary?" The answer is, that it never 
can be necessary, or even possible for that power to vio- 
late its own modes of action, or those laws by which it 
necessarily operates : this would be inconsistency with 
itself, which is utterly impossible. But in this matter, 
as in everything else, the pride and folly of man will not 
allow him to refrain from measuring the supreme all-in- 
all by the scale of human conception ; and being in the 
constant habit of violating the laws which he has made 
in society, lie attributes the same frailties and passions 
to his deity. The same infatuation, infused by false 
education, has made him believe that he himself was 
produced at first by a miracle; but to talk of the first 
man is as silly and unphilosophical as it would be to talk 
about the first blade of grass, the first elephant, the first 
worm, or the first fish. These animals, and this blade 
of grass, are so many natural productions of the surface 
of this globe, and man himself, with all his pretensions, 
is nothing else : and should superstition, war, and pesti- 
lence, those perpetual scourges of the earth, remove en- 
tirely by one fell sweep the whole of the human race 
from the face of the earth, the sun would still give his 
light, day and night would succeed each other, rain would 
fall, rivers would run, and woods would grow, in the same 



16 LECTURE I. 

manner as if nothing had happened to this pretended 
favourite of heaven. 

If man would get rid of such follies (with which his 
miseries are nearly connected), and arrive at that happi- 
ness of which his natural organization is capable, it is 
sufficient that he wills it, by removing those obstruc- 
tions by which his mind is enslaved ; and this he must 
owe wholly to himself, — to his own free exertions in 
finding out what human existence really is; and a 
knowledge of his true wants, and proper manner of 
life, will necessarily follow ; but this useful knowledge 
never can be derived from the vain and shadowy study 
of imaginary beings, with their supposed train of super- 
natural actions, but from the study of the physical and 
intellectual powers displayed in nature herself, in which 
there is no deception. The idea of a miracle being 
indisputably contrary to the course of nature, and of 
all experience, the question arises, who can really in his 
mind believe or consent to anything that is so flatly 
opposed to his reason ? for denying a thing with a man's 
heart is nothing else than the gain-saying and dissent 
of a man's reason; — yet men will subject that excellent 
and unerring light to the dead letter of a book, which 
has been varied, corrupted, and misinterpreted in thou- 
sands of different ways, to suit human passions and 



ON MIRACLES. 17 

interests; and which, in all probability, was compiled 
by many different hands, and at various periods, in 
rude imitation of oriental books of much higher anti- 
quity; such as the scriptures of the Bramins, called 
the Shaster, the scriptures of the Persees, called the 
Zundavastaw ; or those of the Bonzes of China, which 
they say were written by Fo-He, whom they call 
God, and Saviour of the world, by giving satisfaction 
for the sins of men. We have also the scriptures of 
Sommonocodom, whom the Talapoins of Siam say 
was born of a virgin,* and was the God expected by 
the universe. 



* The story of what is called the miraculous conception, can 
be accounted for in a very easy and natural way. " According to 
the apocryphal Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, which father Jerome 
Xavier entirely adopts, Mary, when a child, was consecrated to 
the Lord, by the usual vow, and was brought up in the Temple, 
which she did not leave until she was sixteen years of age. This 
naturally created a suspicion that her pregnancy was the effect of 
some intrigue of the priests, who made her believe, or say, that 
it was God who had begotten a child upon her." — Codex Apocryph, : 
N.T. 

The high priest himself was, in all probability, the chief actor 
in this sacerdotal intrigue, for he anxiously pitched upon old 
Joseph to be the husband of Mary; and St Epiphanius assures us 
in his book of ' Heresie/ that Joseph was very old at the time of 
his marriage with the Virgin ; and adds, that he was the father of 
six children by his first wife. And, moreover, the Gospel ascribed 
to St James the Younger, declares that the good old man espoused 



18 LECTURE I. 

Let us call to mind how many juggling tricks of 
heathen and popish priests are recorded in history for 
miracles, and numerous other impositions for the 
wonderful works of their gods and saints ; but are they 
capable of the same evidence as other historical facts ? 
How easy it is for the pious mind (especially in females) 
to be induced to believe the most notorious frauds that 
have the face of piety, and seem done to promote it ! 
But prophecies and miracles have no foundation in 
God or nature, and consequently none in truth ; but 
are created wholly in the imaginations of men, to 
answer the purposes of fraud, or arise from the false 
ideas that men have of the supreme power, the false 
gods they have imagined and set up, which strike 
profound awe and terror into the distorted conceptions 
of their abject supplicants. 

Mary with very great reluctance, as the disparity of their ages 
intimidated him exceedingly, but the high priest prevailed on him 
at last; and it further informs us of the very ill humour of Joseph, 
when he found that his wife had been pregnant before their 
marriage, and the reproaches with which he loaded her, on ac- 
count of her lewdness, unworthy, as he thought, of a virgin 
reared under the eyes of the priests. Mary, as is usual in such 
cases, "excused herself, with tears and protestations, and swore by 
the living God, that she did not know who begot the child upon 
her;" which might indeed be true, if there was a sacerdotal co- 
partnership in the business. " It appears that in her distress, she 
even forgot the adventure of the arch-angel Gabriel. ,, 



/ 



ON MIRACLES. 19 

The votaries of superstitious folly tell us that our 
reason is blinded and lost, so as in nowise to be trusted 
as a guide, and at the same time they declare that it 
is abominable wickedness to suspect the letter and 
authenticity of those books already alluded to, and 
which they pretend to idolize, as being heaven- 
descended. They account it great piety in a man not to 
trust his reason and judgment, but perverse wickedness 
to doubt the fidelity of those who compiled, and caused 
to be adopted as the word of God, the dissonant 
volumes in question. If the host of miracles that are 
related in the said books, called scriptures, are, as 
priests tell us they are, so many appeals to our reason 
and senses, for the truth and authority of the heavenly 
commission of those by whom they are said to have 
been wrought, then we say, let them be tried at the 
same tribunal of our reason and senses; and if they 
cannot abide the test thereof, let them be rejected, and 
their authorities along with them; for the liberty of 
thinking, w T riting, and judging for ourselves in religion, 
is a natural, and even a Protestant right, for the pre- 
servation of which we ought to be incessantly on our 
guard ; otherwise our understandings, as well as our 
purses, will be ridden and oppressed by a designing 
and tyrannical priesthood. 



20 LECTURE I. 

Nothing that is rational and consistent can be under- 
stood from what are called the ' commands of God/ 
except the concatenation of natural causes and things ; 
and by his decrees nothing else is meant than the 
universal laws of nature, Or eternal verity and necessity, 
which are one and the same thing ; and, therefore, the 
more we know of natural things, the more we have 
acquired of the knowledge of the supreme power ; and 
to be able to account for effects by knowing their causes, 
is to know so much of the immutable essence of that 
power. When the ancient philosophers said that such 
a thing was done by a god, or the gods, they were 
only using words suited to the capacity of the vulgar, 
and their meaning was that the thing was done ac- 
cording to the invariable and eternal rules of nature; 
and not, as the ignorant imagine, that nature was idle, 
or her laws interrupted or suspended. 

There is nothing more improbable than that the 
reformer, who is a follower of nature, and a moralist, 
and whose endeavour it is to expose the arts of theolo- 
gians, should have any pretensions to preternatural 
powers ; and, therefore, there is no reason to believe 
that the reputed founder of the christian religion, either 
wrought, or pretended to work miracles ; but as soon as 
that system, to which his name has been affixed, began 



ON MIRACLES. 21 

to have a hireling priesthood, then were miracles 
attributed to him in abundance; and that they have 
been believed through these latter ages of the church, 
is not at all wonderful : the priest had his interest in 
them ; the ignorant and superstitious had a comfort in 
them, and the wise and considerate, from the fear of 
persecution, dared not to inquire into their foundation, 
however marvellous and absurd ; although they appeared 
to them the most manifest and the most self-evident 
impostures that were ever put upon the world, yet they 
have been successful in passing through many ages and 
nations, with a reputation that is perfectly wonderful ; 
and all by mere dint of the zealous exertions, and over- 
powering influence of that privileged body of men, 
whose interest will still be the same and indivisible in 
every part of the world, and whose cunning and well 
adapted oratory tickles the ears, whilst it warps the 
understandings of the million, stupifying their minds 
with dogmas and doctrines about faith and mystery, 
which are past all understanding.* Thus has truth been 

* The first of the christian virtues is faith ; — it consists in an 
impossible conviction of the revealed doctrines, and absurd 
fables, which our religion commands its disciples to believe. 
Hence it appears, that this virtue exacts a total renunciation of 
reason, an impracticable assent to improbable facts, and a blind 
submission to the authority of priests, who are the only guarantees 



22 LECTURE I. 

debased and degraded by faith, — a faith that has made 
men mad, exciting the nearest relations to hate, 
persecute, and even to destroy each other. 

In addition to the invention of miracles, the compilers 
of the Jewish Scriptures have also ascribed to the Supreme 
Being the most downright inconsistencies and contra- 
dictions, and those who maintain that the bible con- 
tains no such direct imputations, assert what is not true, 
for of this there are numerous instances; but for the 
sake of brevity we shall notice only the two following in 
Deuteronomy, chap. 4th and verse 24th. Moses, or 
some person for him, expressly declares that God is a 
consuming fire, although he had directly before, in the 

of the truth of the doctrines and miracles that every christian 
must believe, under the penalty of damnation. It forbids all doubt 
and inquiry ; it reduces man to the passive acquiescence of brutes, 
in matters which he is, at the same time, told are of all things the 
most important to his eternal happiness. Hence it is plain, that 
faith is a virtue invented by men, who, shrinking from the light of 
reason, deceived their fellow creatures, in order to subject them to 
their own authority. If faith be a virtue, it is certainly useful 
only to the spiritual guides of the christians, for the}' alone gather 
its fruits. They represent this reason as perverted, and an un- 
faithful guide, by which they seem to intimate that it was not 
intended for reasonable beings. What grounds then has the 
christian for entertaining such a belief? — His confidence in his 
spiritual guides. But what is the foundation of this confidence ? — 
Revelation. On what then is revelation itself founded ? — On the 
authority of .spiritual guides ! ! — Boulanger. 



ON MIRACLES. 23 

12th verse of the same chapter, denied that God was 
visible, or like any visible thing. In 1st Samuel, 15th 
chap, verse 29th, it is directly denied that God ever 
repents of his decrees ; but Jeremiah, on the contrary, 
affirms, in chap. 18th, verse 8th and 10th, that God re- 
pents both of the good and evil that he had purposed 
and decreed. Besides such abominable contradictions, 
the fanatic devoutly accuses the Almighty Power of 
crimes that are rarely committed by the worst of men, 
such as requiring the sacrifice of the innocent to expiate 
the crimes of the guilty. 

A miracle, being a pretended fact that is contrary to 
nature, admits of no natural evidence, however positively 
the fact may be asserted ; but anything deserving of the 
name of evidence cannot possibly exist, because the fact 
in its own nature excludes all evidence ; but on the other 
hand, the conceptions that any man frames to himself, 
agreeably to the course of nature from his own experi- 
ence and observation, are not prejudices depending on 
his will or imagination, but have their foundation in 
sense and reason, which can never contradict the truth 
of things, and truth requires no man's assent without 
conviction. But he that is persuaded to believe any- 
thing contrary to the known laws of nature, because 
there are things which he never can know, is seduced to 



24 LKCTURE I. 

give up his understanding. It is therefore of the highest 
importance that men should be on their guard against a 
blind and implicit faith, — against believing anything out 
of the sight and reach of their reason and judgment; but 
on all occasions to assert the right, and even the neces- 
sity, of having the unquestionable liberty to think, speak, 
and write freely about religion, for the correction of 
error and discovery of truth, — to restore the world when 
it shall be ripe for it, to the primitive religion of nature, 
which, according to Jesus himself, " is the end of the 
law and the prophets;" from which expression, together 
with a number of others which have been attributed to 
him, it sufficiently appears that the reformation he in- 
tended was the establishment of this religion amongst 
his countrymen, the wiser part of whom being wearied 
out with their old superstitions, and sick of the burden 
and bondage of their priests, were ready and willing 
to embrace it. One of the most ancient fathers of the 
church, even Justin Martyr himself, expressly declares 
that they who lived according to the u law of nature, 
were true christians." But in process of time the 
adulterated church perverted this doctrine of primitive 
simplicity, by strange and fraudulent inventions, to 
suit the corrupt views of the inventors, by which the 
minds of the people were subjugated and entangled 



ON MIRACLES. 25 

with another and worse yoke of bondage, — the into- 
lerable mischiefs of an hireling priesthood ; the abolition 
of which is indispensable to the happiness of the human 
race ; for all history makes it plain, that clerical conten- 
tions, and the bitter animosities, and wars arising there- 
from, have been the bane of society, and the pest of 
nations ; causing unnatural strife in families, " making 
those of a man's own household his foes." 

Would any reflecting person believe that the Span- 
iards ever could have been guilty of such monstrous 
cruelties and wickedness towards the simple and inno- 
cent natives of America, if such horrid butcheries had 
not been sanctioned and pompously set forth in the 
massacres of the bible, where a blood-thirsty robber, — a 
general of banditti, blasphemously declares that these 
crimes were done by command of the Almighty?* 

* Proud of the protection of their Jehovah, the Jews marched 
forth to victory ; heaven authorized them to commit knavery and 
cruelty ; religion, united to avidity, rendered them deaf to the cries 
of nature; and, under the conduct of inhuman chiefs, they destroyed 
the Canaanitish nations, with a barbarity at which every man must 
revolt, whose reason is not annihilated by superstition; their fury 
destroyed every thing, even infants at the breast, in those cities 
whither these monsters carried their victorious arms, by the com- 
mands of their God, or his prophets ; good faith was violated, jus- 
tice outraged, and the most unheard-of cruelties exercised. — 



26 LECTURE I. 

Mystery, miracle, and obscurity, never can be pro- 
ductive of virtue and knowledge, because they are the 
regions of imposture and ignorance, where reason and 
the light of nature are condemned ; — in these dominions 
therefore, knaves only reign, and fools alone obey ; for 
goodness, virtue, and knowledge, are not likely to be 
found in such company. The religion that is not natural 
is necessarily artificial, and is made up of delusive in- 
ventions, the pretended mysteries and inspirations of 
impostors ; but truth being within (and not beyond) the 
boundaries of nature, needs not the support of inspiration, 
which is capable of as many deceptions as any impostor 
pleases, while he thrusts out truth to introduce falsehood 
in its room ; sanctifying the greatest enormities as the 
will and wisdom of God, demolishing virtue, dethroning 
reason and setting up the most unnatural barbarities for 
the worship of the supreme power. This inspiration has 
also given birth to all saintly villainy, to religious lies, 
and lying wonders, made way for everything that is 
impious and false ; for all that is scandalous of Almighty 
power, and pernicious to man. 

In all the systems of religion that pretend to revela- 
tion (that is, all those of art), mystery is only another 
word for fraud ; yet, in the hands of dexterous spiritual 
craftsmen, it becomes a formidable auxiliary, accounting 



ON MIRACLES. 27 

for everything that is rejected by common sense and 
experience, and claiming its full share of credit with any 
of the other religious dogmas, the disbelief of which 
consigns man to eternal perdition ; but he who may be 
so easily damned out of his reason, may be damned into 
any belief or opinion ; for nothing can be too monstrous 
for his pliable timidity, or too shocking to his easy 
credulity, if the terrors of damnation are properly held 
over him. In this manner are the light of nature and 
human judgment thrown down, and the authority of the 
priest set up in their place, and that authority must not 
be examined by reason, for if it be, reason will throw it 
down by a single flash of her torch. When all these 
things are duly considered, there arises a conviction that 
every hypothesis that is not founded in nature is absurd, 
and therefore cannot be the object of rational belief; — 
for nature is as it ever has been, and is ever likely to 
continue ; so the only true religion can have no other 
foundation than nature, which never deceives ; and the 
laws of omnipotence cannot be different, or if you please, 
cannot be less evident than nature's laws. 

The Pentateuch, or the books attributed to Moses, 
are full of miracles and prodigies the most astonishing ; 
but before those books were fabricated, which could not 



28 LECTURE I. 

possibly be before the restoration from Babylon by 
Cyrus, the Jews had been successively in slavery amongst 
five or six of the Pagan nations around them, and could 
not therefore be unacquainted with the fabulous legends 
of those countries ; and accordingly we find the ground- 
work of many, if not of all their miraculous stories, in 
fabulous traditions of much higher antiquity.* 

The unity of the Supreme Being was the secret of the 

* All superstitions have resemblances and affinities. The heathens 
perceived in their religion circumstances conformable to, and which 
gave rise to those adopted in Christianity. They had miracles, 
oracles, and predictions : their mythology exhibited gods dethroned 
and replacing one another : there we see gods persecuted, exiled, 
and put to death ; an Osiris killed by Typhon, and raised again 
from the dead; an Apollo expelled from heaven; and especially we 
find many points of conformity between Esculapius and Jesus 
Christ. The heathen god was son of Apollo and the maid (or 
virgin) Boebias; and, like Jesus, performed a great number of 
miraculous cures ; he was punished and thunderstruck by Jupiter, 
for having raised the dead and restored them to a better life. After 
his death, he too went and rejoined the god his father. 

The fathers of the church themselves have found striking con- 
formities between Jesus and Prometheus, who was called the 
wisdom of the father. He was punished by Jupiter for having 
saved the human race, who were on the point of being precipitated 
into Tartarus. Suidas says, that they gave Prometheus a surname 
which signifies, he who died for the people. He was crucified on 
Caucasus, and Tertullian speaks of crosses found there. — Rondel on 
Superstition. 



ON MIRACLES. 29 

initiated in the Egyptian mysteries of Isis (or Nature), 
and Moses being a priest of Isis, knew it as a matter of 
course, and made it the foundation of his scheme. 

The story of the creation of the world in six days 
is taken from a fable that was famous amongst the 
Indians, Chaldeans, and other nations of the east, " who 
taught that God made the world in six periods, or 
gahambars, according to the ancient Zoroaster, who was 
so celebrated amongst the Persians." The learned main- 
tain that, in the original Hebrew Talmud, the expression 
in the first verse of Genesis, is in the plural, viz., " the 
Gods made heaven and earth ; " which is another proof 
of the falseness of our translation. 

Their story about the first man seems to be taken 
from Apollodorus's fable of Prometheus, who made the 
first man and woman with clay, and afterwards animated 
them with fire, which he had stolen from the chariot of 
the sun, and thus imitated in Genesis, " breathed into 
their nostrils the breath of life." 

The passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites is copied 
from the triumphant march of Bacchus, when from 
Egypt he went to conquer India, as the fable goes, — 
and the Arabian name of Bacchus, which, according to 
the learned Taylor, is Mises, has been, by a very slight 
disguise, converted into the Jewish name Moses. 



30 LECTURE I. 

Bacchus, in a jovial mood, drew wine from the rock by 
a stroke of his rod, but in this particular Moses does not 
imitate him, very wisely giving preference to water, 
rather than to wine, in a desart. 

The miracle of the manna has long been detected and 
exposed ; for Josephus tells us that in his time it was 
found in great quantities in Arabia, and the plant which 
produces it is now cultivated in Cicily and Southern 
Italy. 

The trick of the Brazen Serpent was no doubt an 
invention which Moses had learnt of the Egyptian 
priests, a sort of automaton worked in a particular way 
so as to make the ignorant people believe that their 
diseases were cured by a miracle. 

It was a part of military discipline amongst the 
Persians, Arabians, and other nations of the east, when 
marching large armies through the desarts, to carry in 
the van during the night, fires made with such combus- 
tible matter as would produce a great flame, which was 
elevated so high as to be distinctly seen by all in the 
rear, appearing as a " jrillar of fire" pointing out and 
directing the line of march: sometimes these lights 
were elevated upon long poles near the General's tent, 
having at a distance the appearance of balls of fire : — 
and to show the line of march during the day, such com- 



ON MIRACLES. 31 

bustibles were burnt as would produce the greatest 
cloud, or "pillar of smoke" This military usage is 
mentioned both by Herodotus and Quintus Curtius ; 
and Alexander himself adopted it from the Persians. 
This is a remarkable instance wherein the Jewish com- 
pilers, or fabricators, have, with a shameless effrontery 
that is altogether matchless, except by their own books, 
contrived to turn a common military usage into a 
miracle. 

The story of Jephtha's sacrificing his daughter has 
every mark of being an imitation of the Greek tradition 
of Agamemnon's immolation of his daughter Iphigenia, 
in the famous expedition against Troy, which was taken 
by the Greeks full two hundred years before the Jews 
had either a country or writings of their own. 

The exploits of Samson are borrowed from those of 
Hercules, and the imitation appears close and servile in 
the story of the gates of Gaza, as taken from that of 
Hercules and the pillars of Gadez, or Cadiz.* 



* The Phoenicians related nearly the same exploits of their 
Hercules, (according to Varro, there were no less than forty-four 
Herculeses) as the Jews relate of Samson in the book of Judges ; 
and as lion-killing was common to both, the Jew, as usual, far ex- 
ceeding the other in the hyperbole ; we may reasonably conclude 
that the Jewish Samson was only an imitation of the Phoenician 
giant. — See Isaac Vossius. 



32 LECTURE T. 

The shocking tale of slaying all the eldest male 
children of Egypt seems to be taken from the historical 
fact that the seventh Ptolemy caused all the young men 
of Alexandria to be murdered ; and if this be the foun- 
dation of the story, it adds another proof that the Pen- 
tateuch is anything but an ancient book. 

The fable of Arion on the dolphin's back has served 
for the ground work of the monstrously absurd tale of 
Jonah and the whale. The former is pretty and amusing 
enough as a fiction, but its recoinage in the Jewish mint 
has given it all the features of the most barbarous 
ignorance. 

There are several floods mentioned in the Pagan 
legends, such as the Egyptian inundation of Prometheus, 
the Grecian floods of Ogyges and Deucalion, from 
some one of which has sprung the Jewish story of 
Noah. The three former were only partial floods, 
deluging a few low countries, whereas the ridiculous 
boldness of the Jewish hyperbolist deluges the whole 
earth, although he could not know that the American 
Continent existed : — the Grecian floods were of such 
antiquity that writers mention them only as traditional 
stories handed down from the remotest ages. The 
Egyptians and Greeks having thus their ancient floods 
as monuments of antiquity, why should not the Jews 



ON MIRACLES. 33 

get up one also, when they had become a petty nation, 
so they borrowed from the legend of Deucalion, imi- 
tating in detail almost every circumstance, as we have 
it related in the Syrian Goddess of Lucian; but the 
narrator, in order to conceal the identity of the stories, 
must make a change of names, by putting Noah, or Noe, 
in place of Deucalion, which suited his purpose. The 
Chaldeans, either admitting the Grecian floods, or 
claiming the honor of having one of their own, from 
some great overflowing of the Euphrates, called their 
pilot by the name of Noe, a name no doubt familiar 
to the Jews when they were slaves to the Babylonians, 
and hence their name of Noah, which is nearly the 
same as Noe, in sound. 

The writer of Genesis, after the eating of the apple, 
and the expulsion of the destitute couple from the 
delicious abodes of Paradise, places cherubim, or angels, 
as centinels at the doors of the garden, armed with 
flaming two-handed swords, lest the forlorn wanderers 
should attempt, by stratagem or force, to regain the 
apple tree, and their happy mansions. This appears to 
be a close imitation of the ancient fable of the poets, 
who placed a terrible dragon to guard the golden apples 
of the Hesperides. If the angelical guard of Eden was 
kept up until the flood (as some of the saints have 

D 



34 LECTURE I. 

supposed) without the usual relief of centinels, the poor 
angels must have been on duty sixteen hundred and 
fifty years ! ! ! 

If Amphion, by the music of his flute alone, caused 
the stones to rise spontaneously, and place themselves so 
as to form the walls of Thebes, why should not Joshua 
reverse the miracle, by tumbling down the walls of 
Jericho, merely by the sound of trumpets ? 

The miracle of the hermaphrodite created in Genesis, 
1st c, 27th v., had not, we may presume, been found to 
answer the end that is so pointedly recommended in the 
28th v., and, therefore, another miracle became necessary 
in converting one of Adam's ribs into a more suitable 
helpmate, who was not intended to partake of both 
sexes, but to be purely feminine (c. 2, v. 22), which 
was no doubt more agreeable to our first parent, as it 
gave him fairer means of fulfilling the injunction laid 
in the first part of the 28th verse, to s multiply and reple- 
nish the earth.' But in regard to the question that has 
been started — namely, which of the two shall rise with 
this rib at the resurrection, or which of them shall then 
be best entitled to it — I shall not pretend to judge ; 
but certain it is, that English lawyers would make an 
excellent thing out of such a case in Chancery. A story 
something like the above about Adam, is to be found in 



ON MIRACLES. 35 

the Symposium of Plato, where the first man, according 
to him, was named 'Androginus, who was afterwards 
divided into two parts, male and female.'* 

Romulus and Remus had a god for their father, and a 
virgin for their mother ; — Christianity has similar cases. 

Heres spent a couple of weeks in hell, and afterwards 
came back to the earth, — Esculapius raised Hyppolitus 

* In the Iranian, or ancient Persian manuscripts, there are two 
distinct stories about the creation of man, and from which those of 
Genesis appear to be taken ; but the compiler, not knowing which 
of the accounts to prefer, has very foolishly mingled them together, 
yet still leaving the two creations we find in Genesis. In chapter 1, 
God (in the original it is in the plural, Elohim, or the Gods) is said 
to have created man out of nothing ; and on this first creation there 
were no restrictions whatsoever imposed upon them as to what 
they should eat. ' Behold/ said God, * I have given you every 
herb bearing seed upon earth, and all trees which have in them seed 
according to their kind, that it may be to you for food.' But to 
Adam of the second creation (chapter 2) God said, ' Thou mayest 
eat of every tree in the garden ; but of the tree of knowledge of 
good and evil thou shalt not eat, for in the day thou eatest of it thou 
shalt die the death.' In the first creation, man and woman were 
formed out of nothing at the same moment, male and female, or 
an individual possessing both sexes ; which, probably, was found not 
to answer ; and therefore, in the second creation, God said, * Let 
us make a helper like unto himself;' and to effect this, God sent a 
deep sleep upon Adam, and while he slept God took one of his ribs, 
and closed up its place with flesh, and of this rib a companion was 
made for this second first man, who was called Adam, which signifies 
clay, or red earth. 



36 LECTURE I. 

from the dead, — Hercules saved Alcestes from the hand 
of death ; — Christianity has parallel miracles. 

Nearly all of the above are so many instances wherein 
the Jewish compilers of the Pentateuch have copied 
from the mythological fables, or the traditions of paga- 
nism ; and it is very remarkable that, whatever might be 
the nature of the story or legend thus imitated, these 
compilers have never failed to render that which in the 
original was lively and amusing, into what is now 
deformed and hideous, in a manner that is perfectly 
characteristic of their own semi-savage condition. The 
story of Joseph may be quoted as an exception to the 
above observation ; and it is truly strange that we should 
have it through them in such affecting simplicity ; but 
the impartial amongst the learned are agreed that it cer- 
tainly is not Jewish, and that in the Pentateuch it is 
given almost literally as it stands in the Arabian original; 
but they say that the same justice has not been done to 
the book of Job, taken from the Arabian also. 

All our divines who call themselves orthodox seem to 
agree in declaring that God is infinite ; and yet they 
assert, at the same time, that there are other beings and 
existences besides him whom they have asserted to be 
infinite, which appears to be a contradiction in terms ; 
but the wiser sort of the ancient pagans reasoned with 



ON MIRACLES. 37 

much more consistency when they maintained that God 
made all things of nothing — but himself, whom they held 
to be infinite, and therefore their denial of the existence 
of any other thing besides him necessarily followed ; for, 
said they, if anything else besides him exists, he cannot 
be infinite, but only co-existent with other things. 



END OF LECTURE THE FIRST. 



LECTURE II. 



Our superstitions with our life begin, 

Th' obscene old grand-dam, or the next of kin. 

PEKSIUS. 

^ Every wonder has a veiU 



ON MIRACLES AND OTHER 
SUPERNATUllALS. 

" Another true foundation can no man lay than that 
which God has ever laid in nature." 

There is a famous sect amongst the Mahometans in 
Turkey, noted for their wisdom and strong reasoning 
powers, who maintain that " the great power never has, 
and never can discover itself, with any certainty, in any 
other way than by speaking to the reason and under- 
standing of men ; for if we depend, say they, on oral 
tradition, we lay ourselves open to the greatest falsities 
and impositions, there being nothing so liable to endless 
changes and alterations. Numberless mistakes, additions, 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 39 

and subtractions, according as men's opinions vary by 
the change of times and circumstances. Nor are books 
more exempt from such doubtfulness and uncertainty ; 
since we find so much disagreement and contradiction 
among books written by different men, in different coun- 
tries, and in different ages, and even among the varying 
books written by the same men. The only sure way 
then, say they, is to consult reason, as it comes from 
nature,* or God; live just and honest lives; be kind and 
beneficent to our fellow creatures." 

All attempts to set aside, or to render the laws of 
nature useless and ineffectual, are in the highest degree 
pernicious to man, and a supernatural religion is the 
main-spring of all such evils ; for that religion only can 
be true which is reasonable and convincing to all men ; 
and if it be not generally held, that is a proof that it is 
not convincing. But how few people there are in a 
nation who take the pains to consider the bottom of any 
religion ! ! Whatever is established will attract the 

* It is true, reason is not sufficient to bring us to a perfect know- 
ledge of all things ; but it is able to furnish us with enough to make 
us happy, and that is as much as we need care for; and, as it is the 
supreme and primitive director of every man, to infringe its liberty 
of directing is to invade the common charter of nature, and every 
man's right and property ; so that those who do so, are justly to be 
looked on as the enemies of the human race. 



40 LECTURE II. 

million, who never inquire beyond it, and the thinking 
few who believe it not, afford a proof positive that the 
evidence for it is not strong enough to make them 
believe. And with regard to books of any sort, whether, 
they go by the imposing names of Scriptures or Gospels, 
if found inconsistent with natural religion, and with 
eternal reason — which, being the offspring of truth, never 
varies — then let them be at once rejected, that we may 
free ourselves from those absurdities which the folly or 
the knavery of men has introduced, in opposition to the 
only unerring guides of human conduct. 

" For zeal, fanatic zeal, once wedded fast 
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last/' 

" The Athenians of old, even long before the time of 
Solon, had a prophetic and mysterious book, called in 
their language the Testament, on which they pretended 
the safety of the republic depended. This work of 
darkness appears to have been of the same nature as the 
books of the sybils at Rome, to which also the destiny 
of the nation was attached, at least so pretended the 
priests and pontiffs of both nations, and the more such 
gross impostures were impressed on the minds of their 
victims, the people, the more easily did the politicians 
and theologians united, gain their objects. Yet there 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 41 

was this difference, that, according to Roman history, 
the books of the sybils were always produced, while at 
Athens the Testament was buried in the same artful 
silence as the mysteries of Ceres or Eleusis. Dicearchus 
mentions this Testament in his harangue against De- 
mosthenes, whom he accuses of having failed in respect 
towards this ineffable volume, which contained, as the 
learned say, nothing but a collection of pretended mira- 
cles and predictions by two noted Grecian impostors, 
named Bacis and Antiphylus." 

If such books, instead of being veiled with impene- 
trable clouds, had been examined by the rules of criticism, 
it would have appeared that the sybilline books of Rome 
were only an imitation of the Athenian Testament, fitted 
up to suit the paganism of the Latins. 

" The most dangerous superstitions of the Greeks 
were precisely those which brought money both to the 
priests and to the states ; for the Athenians protected the 
mysteries of Ceres and of Eleusis, for no other reason 
than because they had a moiety of the profits from the 
hierophants, or priests. When Diagoras of Melos 
afterwards maintained openly that those ceremonies were 
contrary to virtue, and corrupted the manners of the 
Greeks, no person could, nor even endeavoured to 
confute him ; but the priests secretly offered an attic 



42 LECTURE II. 

talent to whoever would take away his life." (i Such wa» 
to be the reward of Diagoras ; for even in those days the 
theologists reasoned with poniards and burning fagots, 
instead of the ordinary rules of logic, which they con- 
fessed were not made for them." 

There is nothing more to be feared than the plain 
fact, that the hireling priests in all religions cannot 
possibly have an interest in leading men to opinions that 
are true, but to such opinions only as they have enlisted 
themselves to profess ; and he that believes and vindicates 
things that are false, in as much as they are contrary to 
nature and reason, is an enemy to truth. He that 
believes and justifies what is dishonourable to God, 
and pernicious to reason and right action, embraces 
impious and unjust principles, and when these are put 
into practice he is unrighteous in fact. Nor should we 
stifle in silence the truths we have discovered, for we 
must either vindicate the liberty of truth, or submit to 
the slavery of error ; and believing without seeing, that 
is, without evidence, is nonsense and absurdity. But, on 
the contrary, fanatics see nothing but what is invisible, 
and believe nothing but what is incredible. 

Deists and other lovers of truth think it reasonable 
that, as those histories containing relations of miracles 
and other supernaturals, relate more improbable, and 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 43 

much more incredible things than other histories, they 
ought to bring with them more substantial proofs than 
other histories, to confirm the truth of such prodigies 
as they relate, or else, that every relation in them which 
is not as probable as other true history, should stand for 
nought: for why should we (say they) believe on the 
bare report of unknown reporters, things naturally im- 
possible, or out of the range of experience, because they 
are generally believed by those who never made any 
inquiry ?* Many believers have no disposition, others no 
capacity to examine rightly ; — besides when creeds and 
principles are fixed by authority as being the only right 
and allowable, it discourages all examination; and 
throughout all the systems of pretended revelation, they 
are fixed and established for that end alone, lest men 
should see differently from those who mislead them. 

Fraud and force will always be unavoidable in support- 
ing the inconsistent belief, that things which have no 



* Should we not — ought we not, as thinking beings, naturally to 
wish to satisfy our understandings of the wisdom of these asserted 
ways of providence, instead of silently letting them rest on the un- 
questioned ground on which imposture ever seeks to entrench 
itself? Do not truth, liberty, and virtue, court inquiry as much, and 
with as just right and reason, as tyranny ? Dogmatism and falsehood 
insist on substituting for it blind implicit faith and obedience. 

Ibrahim in Orient ; Mission. 



44 LECTURE II. 

foundation in nature and reason, are necessary parts of 
religion ; and the histories of all churches exhibit con- 
tinued scenes of villany for upholding such inventions ; 
and truth, with all her willingness to come to light, is 
kept in the back ground ; for the more that a man is en- 
dowed with good sense, natural piety, and virtue, the 
more he is secretly hated as a dangerous enemy to the 
priestly order. 

The universality of superstition is owned and confir- 
med in effect, by each distinct sect, in declaring that it 
has crept into all other sects, (their own always excepted), 
the respective teachers of whom find their interest in 
promoting it. Nor is it possible to be otherwise, so long 
as men are taught to build their religion upon an 
artificial, and less extended foundation than that on 
which religion has been laid by the Universal Being of 
nature. And to suppose any thing can be true from 
revelation that is evidently false by reason, is to under- 
mine the revelation of nature ; because nothing unreas- 
onable, nay, which is not highly reasonable, can come 
from that all ruling power of eternal reason. 

The irreconcileable enemies of rational religion, per- 
ceiving it to be too gross, in the present dawn of the 
light of nature, to attack it openly as such, do it covertly 
under the names of infidelity, atheism, &c. — trusting that 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 45 

the times of ignorance and fanaticism will return, when 
the ghastly incubus of false zeal shall again brood over the 
grovelling laity, stifling every natural conception of their 
minds, as being the suggestions of the devil ; particularly 
if they clash with the interests, the real or pretended 
opinions of their priests. 

No system of revealed religion ever was, nor ever can 
be made known to all men, therefore no revealed re- 
ligion can be necessary : for a rule that is not generally 
known cannot be generally obeyed; and since all these 
superstitions differ widely from, and are indeed opposed 
to each other, and you cannot prove one of them to be 
truer than the rest before you can prove that one of 
them is true : all of them have had similar mysteries 
and miracles, and if such things are sacred only because 
they are secret, expose them, and the witchcraft is at an 
end, the spell is broken, and the charm has lost its force ; 
it is but varnish that appears, and nothing of the splendid 
pomp remains but shreds and rottenness. The more 
intrinsic worth a thing has, the better will it bear investi- 
gation ; but fraud and its usual saintly train are the 
fruits and friends of darkness ; so the religion that will 
not bear examination is the kingdom of darkness, 
whereas truth, if not prevented, will always court the 
light that it may be manifest. But it is not intended to 



46 LECTURE IT. 

be seen wherever mystery and miracle are resorted to, — 
like wisdom, it delights to appear in public, it loves 
freedom, openness, and plain dealing ; but the mansion 
of mystery is the pride of ignorance, the delusion of 
madmen and fools, where enthusiasm is born, and the 
prophetic visions of future events are brought forth, — 
where bigots and fanatics are trained, — where the voice 
of reason is stopt, and inquiry is confounded, — and 
where superstition, like fire, resolves everything into 
itself.* 

Man proudly assumes that he is the only creature 
that has a knowledge of God, and if it be so, he is the 
only animal that sins against God, whom he professes 



* A mysterious and unintelligible tone is essentially necessary to 
the ministers of all religions. A clear intelligible religion, without 
mystery, would appear less divine to the generality of men, and 
would be less useful to the sacerdotal order, whose interest it is 
that the people should comprehend nothing of that which they 
believe to be the most important to them : here is without doubt 
the secret of the clergy. The priest must have a metaphysical and 
incomprehensible Deity, whom he makes speak and act in an 
unintelligible manner, reserving to himself the right of explaining 
to mortals his pleasure in his own manner, while the people, who in 
o-eneral wish to have their imaginations pleased rather than their 
understandings instructed, give a preference to a god that is most 
concealed, most mysterious, and most unknown. Hence the 
transition of many nations who adored the sun, to the worship of 
an invisible agency.—" The System of Nature." 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATUR ALS. 47 

to know; for no one amongst the brute creatures ever 
did a thing so bad as he does, when, for a few pence 
per day, he hires himself to kill in foreign wars men 
who never did him any wrong. Birds never quarrel 
with each other except for things necessary to their 
nature, such as food and females ; but men, instigated 
by preternatural chimeras, with which they ought to 
have no concern, destroy one another. If men really 
knew that the only thing necessary to be known in 
regard to God and religion, is principally that of their 
duty towards each other, in their different stations in life, 
they would not be so easily deceived, and deterred from 
exercising their reasoning faculties by theological terrors, 
which inculcate the fear of death, owing, as it is said, to 
the dubious fate of the vital spark afterwards ; for the 
assertions of divines about a very small number of souls 
in the beatitude of celestial joys, and the vast majority 
of others in infernal agonies,* is as hard to prove as the 
existence of the river Styx, the Acheron, or the Elysian 

* There was not anything, however ridiculous and absurd, that 
the superstitious villany of the priests could not introduce ; — they 
declared that the supreme power would suffer a declared enemy so 
far to prevail against him, that when he wished to save all mankind, 
this enemy, or devil, would so far overrule, that through his insti- 
gation a thousand men would be damned for every one that is 
saved ! 



/ 



48 LECTURE II. 

fields of pagan mythology. The more rational belief, there- 
fore is, that as thought and sensibility are the consequence 
of a particular organization of a portion of matter, it 
follows that when that organization ceases, the conjunction 
of those parts is dissolved, and the man is no more ; the 
vital part, or what is called the soul, being the requisite 
compound of air and fire, which rejoin their own elements, 
and although the man is annihilated, the different elements 
which composed his body and mind are eternal. This 
opinion is agreeable to that of one of the earliest fathers 
of the Latin church, Tertullian, who cries out, " O 
man, think what thou wast before created, for if any- 
thing, thou couldst not but remember it ! Thou then 
that wast nothing before thy creation, shall, when thou 
ceasest to live, again return to nothing." 

As all Nature's laws are just and necessary,* she 
requires nothing of us that ought to excite either fear 
or the idea of severity, she being as much in her course 
when men and other animals die, as when she organizes 
them into life ; but if men were taught to have no fear 
of death, where then would be the pride, the power, 
and the profit, that now arise from mysteries and super- 

* Even Tertullian himself says, " Why pain yourselves in seeking 
for a divine law, whilst you have that which is common to mankind, 
and engraven on the tablets of nature ? — Tertull. de corona Militis. 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 49 

naturals ? The idle fears of eternal punishments would 
fall into the ridicule they deserve ; the assuming arro- 
gance of the mystagogues of the church would be laid 
low with all their pageantry and ceremonies, and men 
would have veneration only for truth and wisdom, with 
the moral virtues in their train ; and as they no longer 
imbibed those mischievous principles which have never 
failed to set the world at variance, so no fiery persecuting 
zeal would be required for their maintenance ; and the 
harmony of good will and social virtue would unite 
men peacefully in society. 

It is true, that in these latter enlightened ages, the 
church has not been able to maintain its absurd pre- 
tensions to miracles : but that does not hinder the priests 
from still upholding the reality of those of antiquity, 
with the use of which, together with their other 
machinery of inspiration, mystery, and prophesy, they 
are enabled to carry on their trade in as flourishing a 
manner as ever it was at any former period ; but the 
dreadful charge of supporting such numbers of men as 
are now in pay to maintain impositions, is a cruel burden 
upon the industrious portion of society, which was 
never felt in pagan antiquity,* or even in the earliest 

* According to the mythology of the ancients, their theogony 
consisted of fully thirty thousand, including both bearded and 

E 



50 LECTURE II. 

time of Christianity ; for the revenues now belonging to 
the different orders of priests, monks, and friars, in 
popish countries, and the dignitaries of our own church, 
are a greater tax on labouring man, and have introduced, 
a greater degree of poverty, than has ever been oc- 
casioned by any lay-tyrants, or conquerors : for the 
latter have been contented with temporary plunder only, 
without concerning themselves how to find out ways and 
means to prey upon mankind for ever. The charge 
alone, therefore, of supporting so vast a number of 
ecclesiastics, is a great and melancholy evil in society, 
even if they were employed in the most innocent 
manner, in mere eating and drinking; but this, un- 
happily, is not the case, for as the peace and good order 
of human society consist in the practice of moral duties, 
every diversion of the mind from this proper object, to 
other concerns of a hurtful tendency, or at least, of no 
practical utility, must abate men's zeal in the observance 



unbearded divinities. We have reduced that establishment 
to three only; but nevertheless, and unaccountable as it may 
appear, it has been so contrived by our modern hierophants, that 
on earth the service of these three, together with their train of 
deputies and saints, holy-days, &c, has entailed upon human 
industry a tax of an hundred times the amount per annum of that 
which was contributed yearly to regale the nasal senses of all the 
celestial army of antiquity. 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 51 

and discharge of the moral duties, and consequently, 
prejudice the peace and general good of society. 

Ambition, political tyranny, revenge, and covetous- 
ness, have in all ages more or less plagued the world, 
and been the source of great disorders; but a blind 
zeal to impose preternatural speculations has not only 
had the same effects as these evils, but has carried men 
to a pitch of wickedness, which otherwise, "eye had 
not seen, nor ear heard, nor had entered into the heart 
of man to conceive;" for what ancient or modern 
history can parallel the malign brutality of religious 
fanatics? The most irregular of our passions decay 
with time, and their mischievous effects are restrained 
by common sense, and the policy of society ; and there 
are in us some good passions, or natural feelings of the 
heart, such as compassion, good nature, and humanity, 
which when left free, serve tolerably well to equilibrate 
human conduct ; but that furious zeal which flows from 
religious systems of pretended revelation, gathers 
strength with time, bears -down all those rational and 
useful lessons which we derive from the light of nature, 
overleaping the bounds of the material and animal world, 
and subduing all the tender passions. 

But of all the supernatural engines of mischief that 
have ever been played off upon poor deluded man, 



52 



LECTURE II. 



reason has perhaps had the most powerful adversary in 
the invention of heavenly inspiration, for it is ever in 
readiness as a salvo, to smooth down, and account for 
whatever is rejected by reason and experience, however 
absurd or unsightly : and upon it also is artfully founded 
all legitimate authority against human understanding, 
siniply on its being asserted, (by whom, where, or when, 
we know not) that there have been some men so divinely 
taught of God, that to question their fidelity, or 
doubt their veracity, or not indubitably to receive their 
tales, is, they say, to call to account God himself, 
because their affirmations are stamped with what they 
declare to be the divine impression ; thus their delusions 
are sanctioned, and hence arises the power of the church 
to overawe men into a prescribed belief, without daring 
to make any inquiry ; but let men only learn to treat 
the grave malediction of the priest, when he denounces 
damnation, in the way that it deserves, that is, with 
perfect scorn and contempt; then, and then only, will 
the honest world begin to see that they have as much 
right to judge of these matters as of anything else. 

The voice of truth, being nothing else than the 
language of nature, is plain and easy, soft and harmo- 
nious, the source of all wisdom for informing the head, 
and of all virtue in reforming the heart ; no schisms can 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 53 

ever proceed from that fountain of perfect consistency 
and rectitude, which never can give birth to contention, 
or plans of imperious ambition, for the subjugation of 
the human mind. But, on the other hand, Christianity 
is now become a trade of gain, (godliness is a great 
gain, saith the scripture),* a regular scheme of dominion, 
and a school of contention ; the pure and simple system 
which its reputed founder taught, is now the severest 
satire in the world against the priestcraft of the present 
day. It is true, that in these times the church cannot 
so easily indulge its propensity to set fire to people, 
as it did in former ages, but if Jesus had, by means of 
a miracle similar to some of those ascribed to him, 
revisited the earth about the fourteenth century of his 
own era, and preached the same system of nature that 
he formerly did, he would most assuredly have been put 
to death ; but previous to a second catastrophe in this 
way, we may suppose some catholic priest, with more 
good nature and humanity, than is common in the order, 
to have addressed him in this manner : — " My good 

* " We know from no less an authority than documents laid on 
the table of the House of Commons some years ago, that we 
christians not only make a traffic in our own religion in India, but 
in that of the Pagans also, by actually compelling the natives to 
pay a tax for admission to their own temples, to worship the Idol 
Jaggernaut I " 



54 LECTURE II. 

friend, you cannot but remember that your countrymen, 
the Jews, crucified you for exposing the folly of their 
superstitions and idle ceremonies, and that the mild and 
tolerant government of the Romans could not save you ; 
but if on this occasion you will listen to good advice, 
you may make your fortune, and be no longer under 
the necessity of working as a carpenter, or in danger 
from violence a second time ; for know that of your 
scheme of natural religion and good morals, not a single 
vestige remains, save the name alone ; but upon that 
name, we have contrived to raise the most ambitious 
system of grandeur, riches, power, and dominion, that 
was ever devised by the head of man ; and with a degree 
of success at which you will be astonished, when I tell 
you, that we have done all this merely by reversing the 
principles which you strove to establish : for you judged 
too favourably of human nature, when you supposed 
that the simple religion of deism, together with govern- 
ments founded upon principles of pure ethics, would 
serve to guide the great mass of mankind ; and the 
strongest proof of your ignorance appears in our having 
established a system, by strictly inverting every principle 
of yours ; only by calling in to our aid as much machinery 
from the Pagan mythology, as suited our purpose ; such 
as mystery, miracle, and prophesy, using all our art 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 55 

to foster as much ignorance as possible, that being 
an indispensable ingredient in our mixture ; and to 
strengthen the above, we add the terrors of eternal 
perdition to all who oppose, or do not believe us. 
These are the only proper nostrums for the bulk of 
mankind ; therefore, I say again, be wise for the future, 
— become one of us, and you are sure of a Bishopric, 
on the first vacancy." 

After this address we may easily conceive what would 
be the reply of the virtuous moralist, using his former 
words, — " O ye generation of vipers, ye have made use 
of my name to enslave the human mind, which I en- 
deavoured to set free. I reverenced nature, truth, and 
reason, as my pole-stars, in everything; ye have subverted 
these unerring guides to the utmost of your power, and 
on the ruins thereof have ye raised the empire of hypo- 
crisy and superstitious delusion ye have just described ! 
And being thus arrived at the highest summit of human 
grandeur and power, wallowing in riches and luxury, 
maintained by the earnings of the industrious but credu- 
lous people, ye have held over their weak minds the 
terrors of an imaginary futurity which I never taught, 
grossly deceiving and abusing them in my name, im- 
piously ascribing to me, at the same time, miracles and 
other prodigies which I never wrought, and which are 



56 LECTURE II. 

equally false and abhorrent in the ways of the almighty 
power. " Ye are not my followers, but the followers of 
that wild and inconsistent visionary Saul, or Paul, who 
in my name taught unintelligible dogmas, and absurd 
reveries about my deification, and upon which false foun- 
dation ye have raised your present boasted edifice of 
superstitious grandeur. I taught my followers to be 
like sheep among wolves, but ye are wolves among 
sheep." 

In descending from the miracles of antiquity, down to 
those attributed to the early Christians, we are told by 
Lucian, Celsus, Julian, and others, that these seeming 
prodigies were performed by crafty jugglers, expert at 
their trade, — miracle-mongers by profession. Celsus 
represents all the Christian wonder-workers as mere va- 
gabonds and common cheats, "who rambled about to 
fairs and markets; not in the circles of the wiser or 
better sort, for among such they never ventured to ap- 
pear ; but where they saw a set of raw young fellows, 
slaves, or fools, here they obtruded themselves, and prac- 
tised all their arts of deception." Csecilius calls them a 
" lurking nation, shunning the light ; mute in public — 
prating in corners." The charge of fraud and imposture 
was constantly urged against them by their opponents, 
and with good reason, as their constant pretension was 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 57 

to the command of supernatural power. Did they ever 
exhibit their miracles amongst the learned, intelligent, 
or higher ranks of the people ? No. To whom then ? 
To the lowest classes, to the uninformed, weak, and 
ignorant only. What were those miracles ? Such only 
as might easily be counterfeited, when aided by collu- 
sion, — casting out what they called devils, healing the 
sick, lame, blind, and causing those to speak who pre- 
tend to be dumb.* 

The most notorious, and withal the most accomplished, 
of all those vagabond quacks in theology, appears to have 



* Miracles appear to have been invented to supply the want of 
good reasons. Truth and evidence have no need of miracles to 
ensure their reception. Is it not very astonishing that God Almighty 
should find it easier to derange the order of nature, than to con- 
vince mankind of truths the most evident, and calculated to force 
their assent ? Miracles were introduced to prove things which it is 
impossible to believe, — things incredible are here adduced in proof 
of incredible things. Almost all impostors who have fabricated reli- 
gions, have announced incredibilities to mankind; and they have 
afterwards fabricated miracles in proof of those incredibilities. 
" You cannot (they said) comprehend what I tell you ;. but I will 
clearly prove that I tell the truth, by doing things which you can- 
not comprehend." Truth is simple and evident; the marvellous is 
ever to be suspected. Nature is always true to herself; she acts 
by invarying laws. To say that God performs miracles, is to say 
that he contradicts himself, and violates the laws which he has pre- 
scribed to nature; it is to say, that he renders useless human 
reason, of which he is the author.— Christianity Unveiled. 



58 LECTURE II. 

been Saul, alias Paul, of saintly memory, and a whole- 
sale manufacturer of miracle, mystery, and quibble. The 
most probable account we have of this man is in the 
Acts of the Ebionites, who tell us that he was not origi- 
nally a Jew, but a Gentile, or Pagan proselyte, whose 
itinerant propensities led him to Jerusalem, where he 
was employed as a menial servant by Gamaliel, who was 
then the high priest of the Jews. Here his active and 
overbearing disposition soon distinguished itself in fer- 
reting out, and running down, the new sect of Galileans, 
or Christians, the better to ingratiate himself with the 
high priest, to whose daughter he had impudence enough 
to have pretensions in marriage ; and for that purpose 
he submitted to the operation of circumcision. But his 
circumcision availed him nothing, and he might well 
ask, as he does in Romans, chap. 3rd, verse 1st, " what 
profit is there of circumcision?" for both the young 
lady and her father were sadly against the match. Nor 
was this aversion on the part of the daughter to be won- 
dered at, if we consider the personal description given 
of him by Lucian and others, viz. that he was bald 
headed, short in stature, hook nosed, bandy legged, with 
a fierce forbidding look. Thus repulsed in his views of 
marriage, he wreaked his revenge on Gamaliel ; — saw 
visions from heaven, " brighter than the sun at noon- 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 59 

day," left his master the high priest, and went over to 
the Galileans. It is not necessary to say much about 
the three varying accounts he gives of himself in the 
Acts of the Apostles, but these inconsistent statements 
verify the old adage, that those who depart from the 
truth ought to have good memories. Having been driven 
out of Antioch in Phrygia (Acts, chap. 13th) for his mal- 
practices, he proceeded to the town of Iconium (Acts, 
chap. 14th) where the fathers say he made a convert of 
St Thecla, the first female martyr. She had been con- 
tracted to Thamirus, a man handsome, rich, noble, and 
of the first rank in the city ; but Paul having converted 
her, she renounced her marriage to embrace virginity. 
Enraged at this seduction, Thamirus complained thereof 
to the Roman pro-consul, Sextilius, who caused the 
saint to be scourged, and driven out of the city. From 
thence he went to Lystra, where he played one of his 
juggling tricks by collusion, causing a cripple to walk; 
but being followed by some Jews who had seen his leger- 
demain at Antioch and Iconium, he was detected by 
them, and the miracle of the cripple ended in his saint- 
ship being cast out of the city, stoned, and left for dead. 
Soon after this he returned to Antioch, and here the 
fathers tell us he was joined by his convert Thecla, who, 
as a matter of course, would be abandoned by her rela- 



60 LECTURE II. 

tions ; but with Paul she had no doubt a very proper 
asylum for the preservation of her chastity, for where 
could it be so safe as in the keeping of a saint ? Good 
repute is not much cared for, in the wanderings of female 
adventurers, especially in those who follow vagrant 
preachers. The saint was again flogged at Thyatira, 
for his old habit of tampering with the women; and 
practising the same sly custom again at Thessalonica, the 
same reward was prepared for him, but he was concealed 
by his friend Jason, and sent from thence in the night 
(Acts 17th, verse 10th) to Bera, or Berea, from which 
place he soon absconded likewise, being afraid of another 
flogging, leaving behind him in that town his compa- 
nions, Silas and Timotheus, who were less obnoxious 
than himself, probably from having less of the libido, 
dinis, in them. At Ephesus his outrageous conduct 
would in all likelihood have cost him his life, and some of 
his companions were caught, but he himself escaped into 
Macedonia, not choosing to abide the mode of trial that 
was recommended by the town clerk. It is certain that 
although Paul abounded in miracles to benefit others, 
yet the poor fellow could not perform a single one to 
save himself, or his companions, even when they stood 
most in need of them ; nor could he preach himself out 
of bonds. In his Second Epistle to the Corinthians 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SU PERN ATURA LS. Gl 

(chap, lltli) he tells us that the Jews flogged him five 
times, and that each time he received thirty-nine lashes ; 
that he was thrice beaten with rods, and once stoned, 
punishments which were then commonly inflicted on 
such turbulent and seditious demagogues. But the asto- 
nishing part of the matter is, his success in causing a vast 
majority of the Christian world to believe that he never 
outraged the peace of society, nor committed any crimes 
to deserve those chastisements. He tells us farther, that 
he had been " a night and a day in the deep," which 
showed a laudable ambition not to be outdone by Jonah 
and his whale, but he does not tell us how he found him- 
self after such a ducking.* The above are a few sketches 
of the true character and conduct of a vagrant, unruly 
mystagogue, who, nevertheless, has commanded the faith 
and veneration of those called true believers (that is, all 
who believe whatever has been taught them in childhood) 
for more than sixteen centuries ! ! ! 

After venturing so far to take a peep into the holy of 
holies, to examine the great arcanum of priestcraft, it 

* He himself tells us that he was ravished up to the third 
heaven ; but why this ravishment, — for what good end was he forced 
thither, and what did he learn by this miraculous journey? " Things 

UNSPEAKABLE, WHICH NO MAN COULD COMPREHEND." This is your 

grandest flight, O, Paul ! but you forget to tell us what advantage 
we are to derive from these unspeakables. 



62 LECTURE II. 

may not be improper to digress a little in giving a dis- 
section of another special character, which has long been 
impiously held up by priests and their ignorant followers, 
as being the man according to God's own heart. Now, 
the Hebrew historian relates that this man, David, " col- 
lected about six hundred vagabonds, overwhelmed with 
debts and crimes, and at the head of these banditti, pil- 
laged his countrymen. After these robberies he resolved 
to destroy Nabal and his whole family, because he refused 
to pay contributions to him. He hired out his services 
as a mercenary to King Achish, the enemy of his 
country, and soon afterwards betrays this Achish, not- 
withstanding his kindness to him, which he requites by 
sacking the villages in alliance with that king, massacreing 
every human being, including even infants at the breast, 
that no one might be found at a future day to give testi- 
mony of his depredations ; as if an infant could have pos- 
sibly disclosed his villany ! Another exploit of his was 
to destroy all the inhabitants of some other villages, 
under saws, and harrows, and axes, and by burning them 
in brick-kilns. His ambition now aspires to the top of 
the ladder, and he wrests the throne from Ishbosheth, 
the son of Saul, by an act of perfidy, which he follows 
up by despoiling of his property, and afterwards putting 
to death, Mephibosheth, the son of Saul, and brother 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 63 

of his own peculiar friend and generous protector Jona- 
than ; he has also the horrible wickedness to deliver up 
to the Gibeonites, another son of Saul, and five of 
his grandsons, who perished by the gallows ! ! ! After 
these crimes we need hardly notice his numerous concu- 
bines, his intrigue with Bathsheba, or the murder of her 
husband Uriah." 

The veneration in which such characters have long 
been, and are still held by folly and ignorance, shows 
that superstition is a mad error ; it exalts the unworthy 
and profligate, it fears those who deserve to be loved, 
and it injures whatever it worships: and how 9 indeed, 
can it be expected that the same evil which has in all 
ages, and in all countries, been hurtful to truth and true 
religion, should in any age become the guardian of 
them? 

That the church should have particular respect and 
veneration for this St Paul, is not at all surprising, since 
he has furnished out a greater number of mysterious 
nothings, or nonsensical quibbles, than any other of the 
contributors to the writing of the New Testament ; and 
as his Gospel formed an excellent foundation for theolo- 
gical power and corruption, it is eminently esteemed ; 
whilst that of Barnabas, which seems to have been one 
of moral simplicity, has been suppressed, and declared 



64 LECTURE II. 

to be apocryphal, because it did not favour clerical great- 
ness. It is said, however, to be held in respect by the 
Mahometans, who, after making such interpolations as 
suited their own superstition, found that Mahomet was 
expressly the promised paraclet, or comforter, there men- 
tioned; and that the said Gospel of Barnabas was the 
only true one amongst the many hundreds of Gospels, 
Epistles, Acts, and Revelations of the Christians. 

If Paul was not the first, he certainly must have been 
amongst the very first who corrupted and metamorphosed 
the system of Jesus from its original principles of natural 
light and simplicity ; the strongest proof of which we find 
in his quarrels with Barnabas, James and Peter, who 
directly charge him with this perversion ; and Peter, in 
a letter to James, which is quoted by Cotelerius, 
and prefixed by him to the Clementines, complains 
that his true and legal preaching had been rejected 
amongst the Gentiles, " who had embraced the trifling 
and lawless doctrine of a man who was his enemy." 
Now this could allude to no one else than Paul, who 
was both the apostle of the Gentiles, and the enemy of 
Peter. , 

That Talmud, which was composed by the Jews of 
Mesopotamia, about the fifth century, relates that there 
have been many Christians who, after comparing the 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUFERNATURALS. 65 

miracles of the Old Testament with those of the New, 
embraced Judaism, considering" it impossible that the 
Sovereign Lord of nature should have wrought such stu- 
pendous prodigies for a religion which he intended to 
annihilate. What impious inconsistency ! exclaimed 
they, in supposing that the Almighty power should, for a 
series of ages, have exhibited a train of the most amazing 
miracles in favour of a true religion that was soon to 
become a false one that ! — he would send his own Son, 
who is declared to be no other than himself, to make that 
untrue and nugatory, which he took so many ages to 
erect and establish ! 

One of the Talmtids makes the Almighty gather toge- 
ther his celestial army in the reign of Ahab, and he asks 
the spirits, " Who amongst you will go and deceive Ahab, 
and persuade him to go up to war against Ramoth 
Gilead ? " and there came forth a lying spirit, and stood 
before the Lord and said, " I will persuade him." Here 
we have a lying angel, and God Almighty himself 
prompting to a falsehood, or endeavouring to deceive. 
The belief of such impious absurdities is alone sufficient 
to show that the credulity of man has no bounds what- 
ever ; that it is even greater than anything which his 
mind can possibly conceive. 

In another Lecture it has already been observed, that 



66 LECTURE II. 

as the reputed founder of Christianity was a follower of 
nature, and a preacher of good morals, it is inconsistent 
to suppose that he even believed in miracles ; but on the 
contrary, his earnest intention was to reclaim his country- 
men, the Jews, from all such absurd perversions of rea- 
son and common sense. It does not anywhere appear 
that he himself wrote anything ; and it was not until 
near two hundred years after the time of his death, that 
some obscure pretended followers, using his name, pro- 
duced the books containing the alleged miracles. And as 
the church grew strong in wealth and power, these books 
have been altered and interpolated, at the will and plea- 
sure of the early fathers, to suit their own, and the general 
interests of the church; for, however strange it may 
appear, it is a well-ascertained fact that they were 
frequently engaged in altering, remodelling, and fitting 
up their Gospels, that is, settling what should be, and 
what should not be, the word of God ! ! ! Tithes, and all 
other temporal benefits that served to promote the riches 
and power of the clergy, always formed part of the 
word of God. % 



* What is called the word of God, can have no intelligible mean- 
ing, unless it is taken metaphorically to signify the order or course 
of nature, because it follows and depends upon the immutable and 
eternal laws of nature. 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 67 

It is recorded by Victor of Tunis, an African bishop, 
and the same is also stated by Scaliger, that a general 
alteration of the four Gospels took place in the sixth 
century, by command of the Emperor Anastasius, as 
follows :— " That the holy Gospels, as written, IDIOTIS 
EVANGELISTIS, are to be corrected and amended." 

Mahomet expressly declares that he wrought no mira- 
cles ; but exactly as in the case of Christianity, his less 
judicious followers make him work many of a very asto- 
nishing description ; and many Christians, prompted by 
a false zeal against him, accuse him of boasting of certain 
miracles which the Arabian writers never attributed to 
him. His accusers even go so far as to say that when 
he made his rapid journey to visit all the heavens in a 
single night, he was mounted on the mysterious mare 
Borak, which he had borrowed from his friend, the arch- 
angel Gabriel, (making good the old proverb, that a 
borrowed horse goes far), and that he was so ungrateful 
as not to return the mare, but kept her for his own 
stud. 

One error naturally leads to another, and the art of 
drawing dogmas, or infallible conclusions from false foun- 
dations, which never can be allowed by truth and reason, 
has ever been one of the principal strong-holds of theo- 
logy, which, in endeavouring to support its favourite 



/ 



68 LECTURE II. 

assertion of the creation of matter, rushes headlong into 
a greater difficulty, (if that be possible), for having no 
material to work with, it is forced into the palpable 
absurdity of creating matter out of nothing. The super- 
ficial reasoner cries out, " This clock did not make 
itself, it had an artificer, and therefore matter must have 
had a creator and artificer also." — " Very true, my 
friend, your clock did not always exist as a clock, but 
most assuredly the matter of which it is composed did 
always exist, and ever will exist in some form or other, 
and has undergone thousands of millions of different 
modes and states of being, before nature produced the 
particular substances of wood and metal of which it is 
composed." 

One of the fatal errors impressed upon the mind of 
man in early youth, is the folly of measuring the Almighty 
power, and the endless resources and changes of nature, 
by his own poor, weak, and perverted understanding; 
always taking a distorted or mistaken view of her com- 
mon process in the dissolution, decomposition, and the 
separation of the elementary particles of bodies, for the 
entire and radical annihilation of them, which, if true, 
would indeed be a miracle. It is therefore not repug- 
nant to reason, or contrary to what appears from experi- 
ence to be the universal order of things, to acknowledge 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 69 

that matter is self-existent, self-ruled, and self-modified 
by motion, which is co-eternal with its own nature, and 
may be said to be its executive, or energetic power ; and 
that the annihilation of any part of it, even by its own 
power, which cannot be subject to control, is utterly im- 
possible ; and as there can be no such thing as the 
organization or production of animal life without mo- 
tion, so is it equally necessary in the death and decom- 
position of every creature that has life ; in all which pro- 
cess nature is pursuing her own invariable course of 
perpetual change into new modifications of matter ; but 
utterly denying, by her immutable laws, that any man, 
or other animal that has once been dead in reality, did 
ever come to life again, although it is quite in the pro- 
cess of nature that dead animals (the dissolution of gross 
bodies being wrought by fermentation) should give rise 
to other and very different organizations both animal and 
vegetable. 

A power to work miracles would be superior, and 
external to, the universal and immanent laws by which 
the systems of things are governed ; and exists nowhere 
but in the fantastic imagination of man, being directly 
contrary to the attributes of Almighty power, — to that 
which is the most clear of all others, its unchangeable- 
ness; and the more men are amused with miraculous 



70 



LECTURE II, 



tales, the more will they be diverted from exercising- 
their reason. But when truth is valued, the rational 
faculties will be freely used, and superstition will inevi- 
tably sink, with fanaticism its offspring. The more 
respect that is paid to anything substituted in the room 
of truth and moral righteousness, the less will these be 
practised and regarded ; and whenever the resurrection 
and prevalence of these shall take place, the death-blow 
is given to the false righteousness of faith, and all preter- 
natural religions. 

The infinite number of pretenders in all ages to reve- 
lations from heaven, # supported by miracles, and the 
perpetual introduction of new notions of the Deity, new 

* All the religions on earth declare that they have emanated 
from God, and pretend to possess an exclusive right to his favours. 
The Indian asserts that the Brama himself is the author of his 
worship. The Scandinavian derives his from the awful Odin. If 
the Jew and the Christian have received theirs from Jehovah, by 
the ministry of Moses and Jesus, the Mahometan affirms that he 
has received his from his prophet, inspired by the same God. Thus 
all religions pretend to a divine origin, and they all interdict the 
use of reason in the examination of their sacred titles. Each pre- 
tends to be the only true one, to the exclusion of all others j and 
all acquire the character of falsehood by the palpable contradictions 
with which they are filled ; by the misshapen, obscure, and often 
odious ideas, which they give of the Godhead ; by the whimsical 
laws which they attribute to him ; in short, they all appear to be 
a mass of impostures and reveries equally disgusting to reason. — 
Ecce Homo. 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 71 

commands, new doctrines, and new modes of worship, 
make free inquiry into these matters absolutely neces- 
sary ; and although none of them will be considered as 
the messengers of heaven by the few that are wise and 
considerate, yet the impostors ought to be detected for 
the benefit of the misled many, who either cannot or dare 
not think for themselves ; for it is equally inconsistent 
and ridiculous that we should be required to believe men 
the more, for those very reasons upon which common 
sense tells us we should believe them the less. Tertul- 
lian, speaking of a certain miracle, says, " It is no shame 
to own it, because it is a thing to be ashamed of" Again 
he says, " It is wholly credible, because it is absurd." 
And again, speaking of the same miracle, " It is certain, 
because it is impossible." St Austin said, that " He be- 
lieved some things, because they were absurd and impos- 
sible" Cicero, that all-accomplished philosopher, though 
he was himself an honorary priest, wrote a treatise on 
divination, wherein he has exposed and destroyed the 
whole revealed religion of the Greeks and Romans, by 
showing the imposture of all their miracles and oracles ; 
and he records a saying of the wise Cato, the censor, 
which shows that he understood the whole fraud and 
mystery of the Roman religion as by law established. 



72 ' LECTURE II. 

" I wonder," says Cato, " how one of our priests 
can forbear laughing when he sees another, at the 
thoughts of that fraud they live by;" and had the 
profound Cato lived in the nineteenth century, he 
would have made the same observation ; for the Chris- 
tian priests, as well as those of other religions, do, we 
may be well assured, secretly make themselves merry, 
when over their cups, at the success of their own 
craft, and at the weakness of the people in being so 
easily imposed upon, but more especially for the silly 
absurdity of maintaining them in luxury as the price of 
their fables. 

The oracles of antiquity formed another order of su- 
pernatural, and Eusebius takes occasion to triumph in 
charging his antagonist Porphyry with being the head 
and advocate for a number of the oracles of Greece, 
making part of the heathen religion ; but he takes care 
to withhold from us the matter which accompanies those 
writings of Porphyry, which he quotes ; and this omis- 
sion alone gives us every reason to believe that the 
latter was in reality condemning and exposing oracles, 
instead of being an advocate for them. However, it is 
certain, that although all the lower and many persons in 
the higher classes amongst the Greeks did consult ora- 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 73 

cles in their important affairs, yet in the three greatest 
schools of philosophy they were treated as the absolute 
impostures of priests, and as such they are treated by 
Eusebius. But like all other priests, as he could do 
nothing without the devil, or some of his subaltern imps, 
he assures us that these oracles were delivered by de- 
mons. Though he could not but see clearly that they 
were nothing else than cheats, still he would not confess 
them to be so, because it served the interest and stabi- 
lity of the church, that the devil should have the chief 
direction of the oracles, the better to run down and ex- 
plode the old religion. 

The origin of oracles was like everything else of the 
preternatural order, an imposition on the easy credulity 
of man ; a propensity so notorious in him, that you have 
only to persuade a few people that it is not the sun that 
causes the appearance of day, and having succeeded in 
this, you need not despair of making whole nations em- 
brace the same opinion ; for let any notion be ever so 
monstrous or ridiculous, you have only to maintain it 
by authority for a time until it becomes sanctioned 
by antiquity, and then the truth of it is proved suffi- 
ciently. 

All the false religions in the world, or that have 



74 LECTURE II. 

pestered it, have pretended to inspiration, and this 
shows very clearly that this sort of revelation is, by the 
common consent of mankind, the very best foundation 
of supernatural religion, and therefore every impostor 
pretends to it ; but if we would not suffer ourselves to 
be beguiled, we must be strictly on our guard against 
deceit, and preserve and protect the moral virtues ; for 
sincerity, fidelity, and honesty, are as truly the life and 
soul of true religion, as deception and hypocrisy are the 
bane of it. 

Wicked and designing men, who have conjured up a 
power superior to nature and reason, solely for the pur- 
pose of destroying both, " have depreciated the true- 
born daughter of God, Faithfulness, and anointed the 
bastard Faith in her room." 

In concluding this Lecture, I shall shortly observe that, 
since as men we are all liable to error, the above reason- 
ing has certainly no claim to be exempt from it ; but my 
chief care has been to advance nothing that is not 
consonant to reason and experience, free from every- 
thing that is mysterious ; and to show that the only 
true religion of moral righteousness, whose basis can 
be no other than truth, cannot be founded upon any 
traditional or historical faith, which has no other sup- 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURAXS. 75 

port than the relation of prodigies and preternatural 
actions, which have no other proofs than such as are 
quite as suspicious as the actions themselves, and 
altogether inconsistent with common sense and expe- 
rience. 



END OF LECTURE THE SECOND. 



LECTURE III. 



These fears, this darkness that o'erspreads j'our souls, 
Day can't disperse, but those eternal rules 
That from firm premises right reason draws, 
And a deep insight into nature's laws. 

Lucretius. 
" Miracles for fools, and reasons for wise men." 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS 

FURTHER CONSIDERED. 

In dealing with the important subject of supernaturals 
for the third time, it is analogous with our highest 
admiration of the All-ruling Power again to observe, 
that with the exception of the faint and glimmering 
light which we have of the works of nature before us, 
all knowledge of the Almighty and Self-directing power 
is of infinitely too sublime a nature to be comprehended 
in any degree by poor mortals. And, as we can discover 
but very few of the causes of the endless effects we see 
in nature, it is the most ridiculous of all follies to 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERN A TURA LS. 77 

imagine others, and place them beyond, or external to, 
the empire of nature. Therefore, none are such 
great atheists as those men who gain an ascendency 
over the minds of their fellow men, and therewith the 
riches and luxuries of the world, by propagating or 
maintaining falsehoods, — in impiously pretending, by 
secret inspiration, to have an exclusive knowledge of 
that All-ruling Power. Such men have introduced pro- 
digies and doctrines, not only impertinent to, but absurd 
and unworthy tenets concerning that power, with- 
drawing men as well from their reason, as from the 
study and practice of truth. This sacerdotal villany 
has more or less prevailed in all ages, and must have 
been well known to the cynic, Diogenes, who made 
the following answer to a priest who wanted him to join 
his order : — " Wilt thou (says he) have me to believe 
that those famous men, Epaminondas and Agesilaus, 
shall be miserable hereafter, when thou, who art but an 
ass, and doest nothing of any work, shalt be happy 
only because thou art a priest !" 

Early in the fifth century, a highly respectable Bishop 
of our church, makes the following observations: — 
" Whoever writes anything for the people (says he), 
or addresses his speech to them, must necessarily be 
popular in his doctrine, and invent or discourse what 



78 LECTURE III. 

gratifies them ; for they being unlearned, are therefore 
pertinacious and intractable defenders of their senseless 
prejudices, in so much, that if any one declines from 
the rites and foolish ceremonies of his country, he must 
prepare to drink the juice of the hemlock." In other 
words, the amiable Bishop meant to say that the 
preacher of learning and genius might philosophize at 
home, but abroad he must talk popular nonsense; for 
no sort of brute is more cross-grained, or requires 
more cunning to manage than the superstitious brute, 
especially if he be ignorant. 

Natural powers are amply fit to answer all the ends 
of virtue and true religion ; therefore, supernatural 
powers (allowing for a moment the existence of them) 
are needless. No extraordinary inspiration is necessary 
to teach the most excellent morals that were ever 
taught, # with the reasonable belief of one ruling power 

* The few precepts of sound morality that are to be found in 
the New Testament, and which are so much boasted of by Christians, 
are almost a literal copy of the Morals of Confucius, who wrote 
about six hundred years before the time of Moses, and nearly two 
thousand years before the birth of Christ. This will appear evident 
from some of the following extracts. 

24th Moral — " Do to another what you would he should do to 
you, and do not unto another what you would should not be done 
unto you : thou needest only this law alone ; it is the foundation and 
principle of all the rest." 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS . 79 

supreme ; but so far as regards the name by which we 
designate that power, it cannot possibly be otherwise 
than a matter of perfect indifference. It may be laid 
down as a maxim, that as error and falsehood may be 
confuted, as well by one man, as by a thousand, so 
reason and truth have no more to fear from one thousand, 
than from one man. Let us remember the excellent 
Confucius, the great philosopher of China, who was 
inferior to no man that ever lived : yet neither pre- 
tending to inspiration above nature, nor the power of 
working miracles, he was the revivor of a religion, of 
which nature was the author, which is older than even 
the Chinese race, and as old as their country, which 



51st Moral — " Desire not the death of thine enemy ; thou 
wouldst desire it in vain ; his life is in the hands of heaven." 

53rd Moral — "- Acknowledge thy benefits by the return of other 
benefits, but never revenge injuries." 

63rd Moral — " We may have an aversion for an enemy without 
desiring revenge ; the motions of nature are not always criminal." 

" Do those things which you think right, though you think that 
after you have done them, you shall be disesteemed ; for the vulgar 
are ill judges of good things, and as you despise their praise, so 
despise their censure." 

The disciples of Confucius are yet numerous, after the lapse of 
four thousand years since he lived. He instructed as well by his 
example as by his precepts ; and it would be well if his morals were 
taught in all the schools of Christendom, instead of creeds and 
dogmas which are unintelligible. 



80 LECTURE III. 

their wise men still esteem and enjoy, and which God 
never abolished by any new will, though he has per- 
mitted fools that dislike it, to choose other religions. 
How widely different are such incomparable legislators 
and moralists, from those impostors of antiquity and of 
more modern times, teaching their wild and baneful 
schemes of preternatural revelation ; and who, when 
they perceived that what they established by fraud, 
could only be supported by force, coalesced with corrupt 
legislators, to get it made a capital offence to question 
their dictates, and highly disreputable so much as to 
examine, but perdition to doubt them. The priests, 
for their own interest, were never wanting anywhere 
to promote, and cruelly to enforce all such penal laws ; 
and hence no room was left for the propagation of truth, 
except at the expense of a man's life or liberty, or at 
least of his reputation and employments, of which the 
examples are innumerable in all ages. The Philoso- 
phers therefore, and other well-wishers of mankind, 
were constrained by this holy tyranny, to make use of 
two doctrines, the one public, and accommodated to the 
prejudices of the vulgar; the other philosophical, and 
conformable to reason and the nature of things, con- 
sequently to truth, and which they communicated only 
to friends of known probity, prudence, and capacity; 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 81 

they being well aware from experience that, in matters 
of theology, truth can hardly be declared anywhere, 
except at the hazards that have already been stated. 
This chaos of error and absurdity, in which men are 
bewildered, naturally produces the woful effects of 
mental bondage, superstitious fopperies, pious frauds, 
unintelligible jargons, gross ignorance, hypocrisy, and 
human persecution : from all of which proceeds that 
mass of profligacy and crime that pervades society. 

We learn from Zosimus and others, that the Emperor 
Constantine, whom priests have called the great, after 
he had committed those horrible crimes and cruelties, 
which the Pagan priests told him were not to be ex- 
piated in their religion, was assured by an Egyptian 
bishop of our church, that there was no crime, no 
villany so great, but was to be expiated by the sacra- 
ments of the Christian religion ; and therefore, to get 
himself white-washed, he embraced the new impiety, 
(so Zosimus unfortunately calls the Christian religion), 
and so quitted the religion of his ancestors ; for which, 
however, the priests did not brand him with the epithet 
of apostate, although he was one in the strictest and 
worst sense of the word. But on his nephew, Julian, one 
of the best and greatest of human beings, they bestowed 
this stigma, in spite of the clearest evidence that he was 



82 LECTURE III. 

i 
the very reverse of an apostate, inasmuch as he never 

did embrace the Christian religion in his heart ; for it is 
a known truth that, in his boyhood, he was forced to an 
outward conformity with its rites; but this was in 
semblance only, and that was absolutely necessary in 
order to save his life from the bloodthirstiness of his 
imperial cousin. To show the truth of the above 
remarks, let us see how he satirises our religion;— 
" Whoever," says he, " is guilty of rapes, murders, 
sacrilege, or any other abominable crimes, let him be 
washed with water, and he will become pure and holy ; 
if he relapses into the same impieties, he will again 
become pure and holy, by thumping his breast, and 
beating his head." 

Traditional and historical facts may be precarious and 
uncertain, and the most wonderful will always be the 
most improbable. If the laws of nature are un- 
changeable, no work can be wrought, or event take 
place contrary to them, nor can they contradict them- 
selves ; if they are changeable, there can be no depend- 
ence on anything ; for whatever can interfere with, or 
set them aside, must of necessity set aside all criterions 
of truth, and all possible knowledge of it. If then 
there be any truth that may be depended on, what is 
founded on the laws of nature must remain evidently, and 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 83 

unchangeably so, — till nature changes, — and can suffer 
no mutation by miracles. Nature cannot divest itself 
of itself; and that which may be supposed or imagined 
capable to do it, is altogether supposition and imagina- 
tion, because it can only be said, the proof being 
contrary to nature. The argument on the side of deism, 
therefore, is so far from being pernicious, or destructive 
of true religion, that it tends to fix it on true, solid, 
and eternal principles, which are everywhere of the 
same importance, stability, and lustre. 

Naturalists have observed that there is no species of 
animals that have not some innate defect or weakness, 
whereby they are rendered an easy prey to other 
animals. Now the most vulnerable part of man is on 
the side of his credulity in super naturals, that is to say, 
his belief in that which has no existence ; this unhappy 
propensity has at all times made him ready to be 
practised upon by the interested cunning ones of his 
own species, who, by an impudent and confident pre- 
tence of knowing more than those around them, have 
subdued the reason and understanding of the weak and 
unwary multitude, through whose means they have 
forced the wise and free-thinking few, into the back 
ground of non-resistance. 

" Anciently, as at this day, numbers of vagabond 



84 LECTURE III. 

priests and wandering theologians subsisted by trans- 
porting their superstitions beyond the seas ; and some- 
times, indeed, they became grand pontiffs in countries 
converted by them to new errors, perhaps much more 
pernicious to truth and virtue than those they had 
destroyed."* 

The word spiritual is admirable in its efficacy, and 
endless in its applications, inasmuch as things naturally 
false and absurd, when tried by the rules of reason and 
common sense, may by it be made perfectly true and 
consistent ; or, in other words, that which appears evi- 
dently false in a temporal sense, is capable of being 
made true in the sense spiritual, alias, the nonsensical 
sense ; and therefore, when considered as a tool in the 
hands of a skilful divineling, it is perhaps entitled to 

* " The missions have for their particular object to extend the 
power and influence of the clergy. The church sends enthusiasts 
or knaves to the extremities of the earth, to beat up for subjects, 
and these missionaries transact their business vastly well, and open 
to themselves new branches of commerce ; but their insolence and 
imprudence have occasioned the proscription of the Christian 
religion, in Japan, China, &c. Our missionaries were everywhere 
well received in the beginning, and in general suffered expulsion or 
martyrdom, only when their real designs were discovered. Kambi, 
emperor of China, asked the Jesuit missionaries, at Pekin, what 
they would say, if he would send missionaries to their nation ? A 
holy missionary has been heard to say, that without muskets 
missionaries never could make proselytes." 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 85 

rank as high as inspiration itself; however, they may 
justly be called the watch-words of theology. 

If we may depend upon anything that Origen has 
given us, as being the arguments of Celsus against him, 
it appears the latter asserted that it was the want of 
strict examination and scrutiny into the reports of re- 
puted miracles, that gained them credit in the credulous 
world at first. He makes Celsus say, that some of the 
Christians, neither examining what it was they believed, 
nor caring to be examined,* used this expression : — 
" Do not examine into matters, but believe, and thy 
faith shall infallibly save thee." Celsus would have 
made the same observation if he had lived in these 



* Men blindly follow on in the paths which their fathers trod ; 
they believe, because in infancy they were told they must believe ; 
they hope, because their progenitors hoped ; and they tremble, 
because they trembled. In youth, the ardour of our passions, and 
the continual ebriety of our senses, prevent us thinking seriously of 
a religion too austere and gloomy to please. If by chance a young 
man examines it, he does it with partiality, or without perseve- 
rance; he is often disgusted with a single glance of the eye, on 
contemplating an object so revolting. In riper age, new passions 
and cares, ideas of ambition, greatness, power, the desire of riches,. 
and the hurry of business, absorb the whole attention of man, or 
leave him but few moments to think of religion, which he never 
has the leisure to scrutinize. In old age, the faculties are blunted, 
habits become incorporated with the machine, the senses are debi- 
litated by time and infirmity, and we are no longer able to penetrate 
back to the source of our opinions ; besides, the fear of death then 



86 LECTURE III. 

times, when all scrutiny and exposure is punished by 
the strong arm of tyranny. This mental darkness and 
oppression degrades, and prevents man from becom- 
ing what nature intended he should be, a rational being ; 
and the foolish reveries and deceptions of some vagrant 
preachers, who lived nobody knows exactly when, or 
where, whose veracity was either denied by, or unknown 
to, the men of genius and learning who lived in, and after 
the time of Celsus ; and whose barefaced assertions and 
inconsistencies are forcibly planted as the standards of 
other men's faith, by the canting art of priests, who con- 
demn arguments they cannot confute, a method practised 
everywhere by the promoters of error, and those who 
prefer interest to truth, which they strive to reduce to 
the level of falsehood ; but no power can make that to 
be true, which is found false when tried by nature and 
reason; so no wise man would regard their sentence, 
if it was not unhappily backed by the power of doing 
mischief. 

It has already been observed that, to avoid being ac- 
cused of impiety by the priests, the lovers of truth have 

renders an examination, over which terror commonly presides, very 
liable to suspicion. Civil authority also flies to the support of the 
prejudices of mankind ; compels them to ignorance, by forbidding 
inquiry ; and holds itself in continual readiness to punish all who 
attempt to undeceive them. — Boulanger. 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 87 

in almost every country, been obliged to conceal their 
deistical opinions from motives of self-preservation, while 
they despised the mob, scorned the priest, and enjoyed 
their silent liberty of conscience. 

The famous Lord Shaftesbury, when conferring one 
day with Major Wildman, about the many sects of reli- 
gion in the world, all hostile to each other, they came to 
this conclusion, that, notwithstanding those infinite divi- 
sions caused by the interests of the priests, and the con- 
sequent ignorance of the people, all wise men, in all 
ages and countries, have always been of the same reli- 
gion ; whereupon a lady in the room, who till then 
seemed to mind her needle more than their discourse, 
demanded with much concern, " what that religion 
was ? " to whom Lord Shaftesbury immediately replied, 
" Madam, wise men never tell" 

Aristotle, that consummate philosopher, did, during the 
life of his pupil and patron, Alexander the Great, freely 
read to his scholars the lessons of truth and philosophical 
freedom ; but after the death of Alexander, Eurimedon, 
a priest, accused him of impiety, for introducing some 
philosophical opinions contrary to the religion of the 
Athenians, and he was forced to steal privately from 
Athens, giving this reason to his friends — " That he left 
Athens that he might not give the Athenians occasion 



88 LECTURE III. 

to commit again the same wickedness they committed 
against Socrates, and be guilty of a double crime against 
philosophy. 

It is no wonder that one miracle is said to be wrought 
to prove another. Miracles can be defended by nothing 
but miracles, for if they could be proved by anything 
else, that proof would be a miracle. Homogeneous 
things nourish and support each other ; animal organiza- 
tion can alone be supported by that which has itself been 
organized, either in animal or in vegetable life ; truth is 
supported by truth; lies by lies; fraud by fraud, and 
force by force. But it seems very unreasonable that 
the worst story-tellers should demand the best credit, 
and that on the severest penalties. This of itself is a suf- 
ficient demonstration of the badness of such stories, and 
of the cause in which they are told, that they need such 
penalties to make them pass ; for the most shining truth 
is always attended with the clearest evidence, and virtue, 
being the offspring of truth, is wholly without com- 
pulsion. They go hand in hand, always attended by 
freedom ; but error dwells with dissimulation, vice, and 
compulsion. 

To shew how far some of the garbled and ridiculous 
stories, as related in the Bible, differ from the very same 
stories told in a rational and historical manner, by Jose- 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 89 

phus, a tolerably good historian of the Jews, — speaking 
of Cain, he says, "that after a tedious journey through 
several countries, he took up at length at Nais, and 
settled his abode ; but was so far from mending upon 
his affliction, that he went rather from bad to worse, 
abandoning himself to all manner of outrage, without 
any regard to common justice ; he enriched himself by 
rapine and violence, and made choice of the most 
profligate of monsters for his companions, instructing 
them in the very mystery of their profession. He 
corrupted the simplicity of former times, with a novel 
invention of weights and measures; and exchanged the 
innocency of that primitive generosity and candour, for 
the new tricks of policy and craft. All of which shews 
plainly enough, that the world had been full of inhabi- 
tants long before the father of Cain existed.* 

The story of Nebuchadnezzar is truly beastly as told 
in Daniel, who says " he was driven from men and did 

* Both the Hebrew and Samaritan texts support this truth, for 
Cain, when lamenting his doom, says to God (or Shaddai) — " When 
driven from thy presence, I shall be a fugitive upon the earth, and 
it will happen that whosoever shall meet me will kill me." and God 
said "No, for I will put a mark upon you, so that you shall not he 
killed by any person who may meet you." Now as Abel was killed, 
and Seth not yet born, whom could Cain possibly meet in his 
wanderings to kill him, except his own father, if other inhabitants 
had not existed upon the earth ? 



X 



90 LECTURE III. 

eat grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the 
the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles 
feathers, and his nails like birds' claws." Josephus tells 
the story thus, " that Nebuchadnezzar, after seven years 
spent in solitude, and no one daring during that time 
to disturb his government, God was prevailed on to 
reinstate him in the exercise of his kingly power.' ' He 
farther says that the passage of the Red Sea by the 
Israelites, was effected by the same means and manner 
as that which happened to the Macedonians under the 
command of Alexander, at the Pamphilian sea, in which 
there was nothing miraculous, if Alexander himself is 
to be believed. 

When he relates the miraculous appearance of Moses's 
God on Mount Sinai, he adds, " that the reader may 
take this as he pleases" — a judicious hint, that he may 
believe as much or as little of the story as he pleases. 
If any priest, or lover of the marvellous, should ask me 
why I prefer the relations of Josephus to those of the 
Bible, I answer, simply because the accounts of the 
former are plain, rational, and perfectly consistent with 
experience in matters of fact and history, whereas 
the latter are exactly the reverse in all these parti- 
culars. 

We are told that God has wrought wonders for the 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 91 

benefit and satisfaction of one generation and not for 
another ; but if such violations of nature's laws could be 
at all necessary, they would be equally so at all tim^s, 
and to every people. By this impious charge the justice, 
mercy, goodness, and wisdom of the supreme being is 
degraded, inasmuch as he is represented to us as a 
partial God, full of capricious levity, now choosing 
one thing, then another, and frequently repenting of 
his actions, so as to be under the necessity of amending 
them by the working of miracles ! The belief of such 
absurdities is destructive to the moral character of the 
deity. " The wonders which are said to have been 
wrought in one age, can never convince a sober thinker 
in the next, unless there be such lasting monuments 
of them, and they are so clearly and fully evidenced 
that they appear true against all contradiction : " nor is 
it fit they should; because, to believe that miracles 
were performed in a certain manner, time, and place, 
of which no shadow of proof remains more than in the 
bare report, is putting faith in the reporters, not in the 
operators ; thus I may be always amused by fabulous 
tales as often as simple or bad men please to relate them, 
unless I can be sure that no man will tell a lie to serve 
his own ends, or be imposed upon by others to believe 
a false storv. 



92 LECTURE III. 

As the Supreme power always acts towards man 
agreeably to the moral fitness of things, there can be 
neither room nor occasion for prodigies ; for if reasonable 
exhortations to virtue, and dissuasions from vice, — if the 
example of moral goodness and just laws will not make 
people virtuous, nothing can. But pretended miracles 
and inspirations rather force the passions by violent, than 
guide them by gentle means, and drive men on without 
rational sense, instead of driving it into them. Surprise 
seizes the imagination, the person no longer hesitates 
concerning truth, or deliberates of virtue, but is carried 
away, in the rapid torrent of his misguided passions, by 
the power of supernatural chimeras, which astonish and 
subvert the imagination. Such is the gloomy conse- 
quence when priests succeed in making whatever im- 
pressions they please on the minds of the people, and 
that which reason rejects, and refuses to support, is upheld 
by force and custom. This settled habit, or custom, 
maybe called the goddess of the multitude,* who, when 
backed by their theological leaders, which they are sure 

* Ye seek for happiness — alas, the day ! 
Ye find it not in luxury nor gold, 
Nor in the fame, nor in the envied sway 
For which, O willing slaves to custom old, 
Severe task mistress ! ye your hearts have sold. 

Laon and Cythna. 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERN A TURALS. 93 

to be in all superstitions, are then very dangerous, as 
well as ridiculous opponents of common sense ; for their 
inconsiderate fury has in all ages proved the greatest 
support of the priests against reason, and hence the 
generally received axiom, that the ignorance of the laity 
is the revenue of the clergy.* While matters stand thus, 
it will be a hard matter to come at truth ourselves, and 
dangerous to publish it to others. 

Amongst the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and other 
nations of antiquity, their numerous gods and goddesses 
were taken by the ignorant rabble to be so many real 
personages, and this folly was carefully inculcated and 
taught them by their priests : but amongst the wise and 
the initiated they were considered to be nothing else 
than so many names for the various physical powers of 
nature, for causes, qualities, incidents, &c. : but as the 
prudent and the wise alone were initiated, they carefully 
concealed their opinions respecting the principles of 



* Dr Echard wrote a book on the " contempt of the clergy," 
and Lord Hallifax observed to him that in the said book he had 
not hit on the true cause of that contempt, viz, — the knowledge of 
the laity; to which the doctor readily replied, " God be thanked, 
there was ignorance enough still among the laity to support the 
authority of the clergy." <\ 



94 LECTURE III. 

things, and truth was delivered only under enigmas and 
symbols ; under allegories and metaphors ; thus the 
famous Isis of the Egyptians, whom the vulgar believed 
to have been a queen, and of whom they had thousands 
of fables, meant nothing but nature, or the nature of all 
things, according to the philosophers, who held the 
universe, or all matter, to be the ruling principle, or 
God. And consequently the Supreme Being was said to 
be obscure, or beyond comprehension, none seeing 
deeper than the surface of nature ; which in some degree 
deciphers the inscription upon the figure of Isis at Sais, 
" I AM ALL THAT WAS, IS, AND SHALL 
BE ; NOR HAS ANY MORTAL DISCOVERED 
WHAT IS UNDER MY HOOD." 

It is very remarkable that in the Mosaic story of the 
burning bush, Moses puts into the mouth of the God, 
whose hinder parts he pretends to have seen there, 
the very name which the Almighty power had always 
borne in the sacred mysteries of Isis, viz. — "1 am," or, 
" I am that I am, — thou shalt say to the people of Israel, 
I am hath sent thee," which shows that Moses was an 
adept in those mysteries, and that he knew how to 
turn them to his own account, in imposing upon his 
ignorant followers. 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 95 

If pure deism was universally diffused, then all the 
stocks and branches of the numerous systems of revealed 
religion would be rooted out and destroyed, tainted and 
deeply corrupted as every one of them is with the 
interest and riches of the clergy. # 

Then farewell to all the holy wars of the Church : 
farewell to all the holy burnings and massacres of the 
infuriated zealots of these religions. Nature, being as it 
were denied with the sacred poison, would resume her 
purity and rights; and truth and virtue would prevail 
everywhere; but he who rears up in his own mind 
altars to superstition, is a worshipper of the most abomin- 
able of idols, and is incapable of feeling the force and 
energy of truth. 

A celebrated philosopher has said, that if God had 
deigned to make himself a man, and a Jew, and to die 
in Palestine by an infamous punishment, to expiate the 
crimes of mankind, and to banish sin from the earth, 
there ought to have been no longer any sin, or crime on 
the face of it, whereas, says he, religious crimes seem 
only to have commenced since the time when that event 
is said to have happened ; and the Christians have been 

* Interest is the father of all revealed religions ; implicit be- 
lief begets and fosters ignorance, and ignorance is the mother of 
devotion. 



96 LECTURE III. 

more abominable monsters than all the sectaries of the 
other religions put together;*' and he brings for an 
evident proof of this, the massacres, the wheels, the 
gibbets, and the horrible burnings at the stake of nearly 
a hundred thousand human creatures in a single province 
— the massacres of the anabaptists — the massacres of the 
Lutherans and Papists, from the Rhine to the extremities 
of the north, — the massacres in Ireland, England, and 
Scotland, in the time of Charles the First, who was 
himself massacred, — the massacres ordered by Henry the 
Eighth, and his daughter Mary, — the massacres of St 
Bartholomew in France, and forty years more of other 
massacres between the time of Francis the First, and 
the entry of Henry the Fourth into Paris, — the massacres 
by the inquisition, which are more execrable still, as 
being judicially committed — the massacre of twelve 
millions of the inhabitants of the new world, executed 

* The Jews may perhaps be regarded as an exception on a small 
scale, for " their history displays the most memorable examples of 
the evils arising from superstition and fanaticism: for from these 
arose the numerous revolutions, the horrid and bloody wars, and 
at last the total destruction of that people as a nation, from 
their submission to priests, and their endless credulity ; and from 
this roguery of their priests alone, they became beyond all contra- 
diction the most despicable people that ever existed, being con- 
tinually misled by the knavish commissions which their priests had 
from heaven." 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 97 

crucifix in hand, and this, without reckoning all the 
massacres precedently committed in the name of Jesus 
Christ, to say nothing of the innumerable schisms, and 
twenty wars of popes against popes, bishops against 
bishops, the poisonings, the assassinations, the rapines of 
more than a dozen of popes, who far exceeded a Nero 
or a Caligula, in every species of crime and wickedness ; 
in short, he observes that this horrid and almost unin- 
terrupted chain of religious wars for fourteen centuries, 
never subsisted but among Christians, and that no people 
but themselves ever spilt a drop of human blood for 
theological arguments. We are obliged to grant to this 
philosopher that all this is true, and to which may be 
added the horrors with which so many Christian churches, 
from the very first of their existence, have stained them- 
selves ; the cowardly barbarity of the magistrates who 
eould sacrifice to the priests so many worthy subjects; 
the princes, who, to please them, have become infamous 
persecutors ; so much downright nonsense in all eccle- 
siastical quarrels ; so many abominations in the course 
of them ; the people murdered or ruined ; the thrones of 
so many priests composed of the spoils, and cemented 
with the blood of men ;* the enormous chaos of absur- 

* " The cross was the banner under which madmen assembled to 
glut the earth with blood !" 

H 



98 LECTURE III. 

dities accompanying these crimes, all supported by the 
then main-stay of the church, the fires of the inquisition; 
and mark well that our priests would act the same 
tragedies at this day if law and usage did not restrain 
them.* Should all the Christians have murdered each 
other, brothers cut the throats of brothers for the sake of 
arguments, and should there remain no more than a 
single Christian on the face of the earth, let him look at 
the sun, and it is impossible that he should not acknowledge 
and adore one single, eternal, and almighty being, which 
comprehends within itself everything that exists, — that 
infinite, material, and intellectual sphere, " the centre 
of which is everywhere, and the circumference no- 
where." 

Even atheism itself may perhaps be only false reason- 
ing; whereas superstition is not only false reasoning, 
but superinduces the passion of fear, which is destitute 

* The modern religion of Europe, says Mirabaud, has visibly 
caused more ravages and troubles than any other superstition, and 
is in that respect very accordant to its principles. The theology 
of the present day is a subtile venom, calculated, through the 
importance which is attached to it, to infect every one. By dint of 
metaphysics, modern theologians have become systematically absurd 
and wicked. By once admitting the odious ideas which they 
entertain of the divinity, it is impossible to make them understand 
that they ought to be humane, equitable, pacific, indulgent, and 
tolerant. 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 99 

both of courage and reason, and renders us stupid, 
distracted, and inactive ; for of all fears none confounds 
a man so thoroughly as the fear of the religionist ; and 
of all mobs none are so sanguinary and dangerous to the 
votaries of reason as the fanatical mob, stirred up at the 
instance of their priests ; and those of antiquity differed in 
nothing from the rabble of the present day, except in 
having a more innocent, and less absurd superstition. 

Those men who use their understanding must have 
more sense than those who use it not, but allow others to 
understand for them ; yet if any man presumes to think 
for himself, and in consequence of that, refuses to follow 
the sentiments of the common herd of mankind around 
him, he cannot fail to draw upon himself the most virulent 
malice of the priest, and all his believing adherents, 
together with all those who hope to forward their 
interests by pretending to believe in him, which will be 
about nine hundred and ninety-nine in every thousand ; 
so that our votary of truth and reason can have no credit 
but for what his virtue necessarily procures for him, in 
spite of the malice of his enemies ; whereas, any profli- 
gate fellow is sure of credit, countenance, and support in 
any sect or party whatsoever, although he has no other 
quality to recommend him than the worst of all vices, a 
blind zeal for his own sect or party. 



100 LECTURE III. 

The philosopher already alluded to goes so far as to tell 
us of a miracle that is recorded in the appendix of the first 
council of Nice, wherein it is said, that the holy bishops, 
being full of zeal to distinguish the canonical books from 
the false, placed all the immense collection confusedly 
upon a great table, and a prayer was addressed to the 
Holy Ghost, that he would be pleased to cause the 
apocryphal writings to fall to the ground, — that they did 
so of themselves accordingly, and went under the table, 
whilst those that were genuine remained upon it. He 
even hazards a conjecture that the Holy Ghost might 
possibly receive some assistance in the night, in selecting 
those to be the word of God, which favoured the temporal 
interests of the clergy, and the grandeur of the church ; 
whilst the story of the priests of Bel, or Baal, and all 
such books, would be decidedly apocryphal, for exposing 
the tricks of the priests in consuming the provisions of 
the God, during the night. 

Photius relates that the celebrated Synesius, originally 
a heathen of great learning and abilities, was, like the 
wise Celsus, a disbeliever in all miracles ; yet he easily 
came into the belief of the resurrection, after he was 
made a bishop ; and after receiving the new light, as the 
consequence of his promotion, he declared that exact 
philosophical truth was not necessary for " the vulgar, 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 101 

who might receive hurt from their knowledge ; I shall 
therefore (says he) tell fables to the people, suffering 
them to live in their prejudices." So do the dignitaries 
of the church in the present day. 

It cannot be too often repeated that supernaturals of 
all descriptions form the market in which the mental 
liberties, properties, and the souls of men are bought and 
sold. This trade is beneficial to the teachers or venders, 
but prejudicial in practice to the customers ; the doctors 
gain what the disciples lose by it ; the more poverty it 
causes to the stupid believers, the more opulence and 
luxury the preachers enjoy, — the more the simple convert 
gives, the more the church receives. All concerned in 
a false religion must necessarily be either sheepish prey, 
or preying wolves, but the true religion is equally within 
the comprehension of all, and allows of no inlet to 
designing knavery, being agreeable to, and worthy of 
God and nature, therefore pure and perfect. But all 
revealed, or artificial religions, puzzle and confound their 
victims, bewildering them in amaze of confusion, wherein 
they cannot distinguish between good and evil, labouring 
as they do under the uncertainty of moral right and 
wrong. But that of nature clears the apprehension, and 
informs the judgment, producing satisfaction and serenity 



102 LECTURE III. 

of mind. Reason and nature, uncorrupted by bad 
education, or regenerated from it, afford the possessor 
pleasures pure and harmonious, widely different from the 
ghastly starts and convulsive raptures of the saintly 
fanatic, whose high tide of spiritual folly rolls rapidly on, 
and leaves the channel dry. " Not so the charms of 
philosophy, — it has all the serene majesty and harmony 
of nature within, and without, it is all manly, just, and 
good." But religion formed by human inventions pro- 
duces perplexity and discord ; because it is founded upon 
false, unnatural, and precarious principles ; and in the 
paroxysms of a blind and heated zeal, is a hell in the 
minds of its votaries, as well as occasioning a hell with- 
out to the world. What horrors has it not begotten ? 
What species of iniquity has it not brought forth ? By 
its fruits it may be known. Thus, from what has been 
shown, it follows that a religion built on fallible human 
traditions (as all the revealed systems are) is necessarily 
fallible and human. Why then should that be infallibly 
depended on, or how can that be safely credited, which 
is not erected on infallible principles, but on fables and 
legends that are equally absurd and uncertain ? or, if it 
was possible they should be true, we cannot possibly 
know them to be so. Again let it be repeated, that 

hA 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 103 

obscurity and uncertainty are the best cloaks for falsehood 
to wrap itself in. 

It is true that the fatted calf of superstition is now 
staggering as from a fatal thrust, yet if men are not 
incessantly on their guard for the conservation of their 
liberties, what security have we that those times may not 
return, when a hireling priesthood, backed by mad 
fanatics, will, as they already have done, destroy the 
supporters of these truths with fire and fagot ? But the 
truths themselves can never be destroyed, because they 
are founded in nature and right reason. Let the soaring 
irrational enthusiast mount as high as the aspiring 
ladder of man's sublimest stretch of imagination can 
carry him, it is nature all the way : • beyond it no 
philosopher, but fools alone presume, or knaves, in their 
insincerity. 

To believe things dishonourable of God is certainly 
bringing no honour to him ; for instance, to believe that 
he cannot, or will not pardon guilty persons, unless he 
takes vengeance on an innocent person ; that he will not 
save the unrighteous, unless he condemns the righteous ; 
"that God the Father is not good nor beneficent to 
man, unless God the Son makes him so ; and that God 
the Holy Ghost is implacable, and will not forgive sins 
committed against himself, — can this faith be called 



104 LECTURE III. 

righteousness which makes the gods unrighteous ? # And 
is this the faith that must save mankind, which damns 
both gods and men ? Here is an impious and unrighteous 
faith, which we are required to believe in as righteous- 
ness." To believe, or acquiesce in such blasphemous 
absurdities, requires that ample share of stupidity which 
the Supreme power has granted to true believers only ; 
and if thou, O Lord, art not more gracious and benignant 
than thy worshippers represent thee, thou wilt have but 
little praise or adoration from honest infidels, whose 
minds are capable of rational and just reflection, however 
fond thou may est be of the abject homage of human 
worship ; for they will sooner believe with fools that 
there is no supreme power necessarily existing in the 
government of the universe, than that there is such a 
God as knaves represent thee.f And if they are to be 

* Sacerdotal knavery has engendered, and ignorance and implicit 
belief have sanctioned ideas, so monstrous as to charge the Almighty 
power with having devised the murder of innocence to atone for 
guilt ! ! ! Such a faith as this is more preposterous, more wicked, 
and more impious than downright Atheism itself. " The immolating 
or sacrificing of one person or thing, to atone for the guilt of 
another, can make no part of the economy of an all-wise and all- 
powerful being; such unjust substitution involving a virtual denial 
of these sublime attributes." 

f " The odious dogmas of predestination and effectual calling, 
which make God the most fanatical and cruel of tyrants, by 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 105 

damned for this, they will be damned with a good con- 
science, so that even the hell of priests cannot be a bad 
one while a consciousness of rectitude remains. If there 
is no material fire in that hell for the body, there is no 
immaterial that can hurt a good conscience. 

But granting for a moment the hypothesis that super- 
stition has in any instance, or at any time, proved 
beneficial to human society, owing to its distortion ; yet 
at other times, without number, and in things of incom- 
parably greater importance, it is found to have been 
detrimental, destructive, and utterly pernicious; nor 
advantageous to any, except to priests or princes, who 
dexterously turn it to their own interest, and always 
direct it according to their own pleasure. But the crafty 
empirics do not stop here ; they know full well that the 
falsity of facts, and the utterly untenable ground of 
their arguments, may at any time be detected by men of 
penetration, and therefore they have always boasted of a 
superior, or what they call a divine knowledge above 

supposing that he punishes to all eternity those to whom he refuses 
the means, or the will, of saving themselves, — this gives us the idea 
of nothing but a whimsical tyrant, who, if he be lavish of his favours 
to a few, is at least cruel and unjust to the rest : surely nothing can 
be more inconsistent with the just notions of an immutable deity, 
whose mercies are infinite, and whose goodness is inexhaustible." 



106 * LECTURE III. 

nature, and which, they say, is not subject to the rules of 
criticism, nor in any respect an object of the under- 
standing. In this metaphysical strong-hold they have 
hitherto sheltered themselves against the light of nature 
and common sense, and the effects have been in the 
highest degree pernicious and deadly to reason, freedom, 
and the happiness of mankind, by introducing and 
establishing spiritual tyranny in the clergy, and the most 
abject slavery of mind in their silly believers. 

It may be objected, that God can do things contrary 
to nature, but we repeat that, setting aside all foolish and 
inconsistent traditions, what proof is there that the 
supreme power ever did, or ever will suspend, or depart 
from, the eternal laws of nature ("that it can, is doubtful; 
that it never will, is certain"). And therefore every man 
of judicious reflection may suspend his belief until he is 
rationally convinced, and by a noble effort spurn from 
his mind the priestly scourge of damnation which hangs 
over him for doubting. This famous scourge "drives faith 
into the timorous, as a mallet drives a wedge into a 
block ; and in like manner divides, rends, and weakens 
the understanding." 

Common sense, if not suppressed, is alone sufficient to 
destroy all the evidence in the world of a thing that is 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 107 

diametrically opposed to it; for it would be a foolish 
attempt to prove a fact true, by other facts which equally 
want proof themselves. 

On a faith so pernicious every unprejudiced person 
must look with abhorrence, and hold in suspicion the 
professors thereof, whether they are induced to it by 
their own blind ignorance, or by hire and bribery ; the 
former class deserve our pity, from their neglect of 
common sense ; the latter merit our contempt from their 
shameless selfishness and delusions. In the present 
dawn of rational light, the minds of the rising generation 
should therefore be taught to be on their guard, as to 
the compass by which they direct their judgment and 
conduct ; — let them scrupulously weigh arguments, and 
the reason of things impartially ; and let not men be 
deluded by holy names and a face of godliness ; since it 
has generally happened that those whom Holy Mother 
Church has designated as saints, have been the vilest of 
men ; insomuch that saint and villian have commonly 
meant the same thing, and may be considered as synoni- 
mous terms ; for it has seldom escaped the penetration 
of those who are capable of thinking, that all who appear 
more sanctified than others whose pretensions go not 
beyond the standard of moral honesty, have only been so 
much more secretly and artfully wicked. And therefore, 



108 LECTURE III. 

if we would not be choused out of our understanding 
and substance, by base hypocrisy in every grave and 
holy shape, let us remember the old maxim, " when you 
see a saint, look to yourself " 

Since all the authority that we have of the authenticity 
of the earliest Christian writings and traditions, is from 
the fathers of the church, it is highly proper that the 
character and conduct of these men should not wholly 
escape observation; and against some of them it has 
been strongly contended by many of the pagan writers 
of credit, that those writings called gospels, had no exis- 
tence as we now see them, until very long (some say 
more than two centuries) after the times in which it is 
said the Apostles lived ; that they were compiled by 
obscure persons from the writings of the Egyptian 
monks, or Therapeutse, who prefixed the names of cer- 
tain Apostles to their writings, the better to obtain 
credit ; that these were again altered, amended, and fitted 
up at will by the early fathers of the church, to suit 
their own interest, and the ignorance of the times ; of 
which fact we have sufficient proofs ; and amongst others 
the younger Scaliger expressly declares, that " they put 
into their scriptures, or gospels, whatever they thought 
would serve their purpose." Faustus says, "we have 
frequently proved that these things were neither writ- 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SLPERXATUR ALS. 109 

ten by himself (Jesus Christ) nor by his Apostles, and 
that they were picked up long after their decease, from 
vao-ue stories and flying reports." Of such suspicious 
materials did a few of the fathers compose and trim up 
the gospels ; each espousing those parts as canonical in 
which his interest, and his peculiar tenets were to be 
found, rejecting* such parts as did but indifferently favour 
the views of the clergy, as being apocryphal : but of all 
these trimmers, none equalled the famous Eusebius, 
bishop of Csesarea, at getting up, and dressing off a 
gospel to suit the general interests of the church. 

But, "to be particular about the fathers, — any at- 
tempt to delineate their ambition, insolence, avarice, 
ignorance, faction, sedition, persecution of each other, 
cruelty, murders,* lies and forgeries, and other flagrant 
vices, would be endless; yet these are the men whose 
honesty we are to depend upon for conveying to us the 
oracles of truth. Are we to learn our religion from 
men immersed in such vices, and who wanted charity ? 
From men who were perpetually quarrelling with, and 

* Episcopius says of the Council of Nice, and others of that 
early period, " that they were led on by fury, faction, and madness," 
which is corroborated by another author, who relates, that at the 
second synod of Ephesus, Dioscoru.s, bishop of Alexandria, 
knocked and kicked Flavianus, Patriarch of Constantinople, with 
such fury that within three days after he died." — V Abb : Condi. 



110 LECTURE III. 

cursing each other? No people upon earth ever differed 
more, or proceeded with greater fury and bitterness in 
their differences : — they were constantly quarrelling 
about the smallest, as well as the greatest points ; and 
for the smallest as well as the greatest they damned 
one another. That these foul marks belong to many of 
the fathers, and all of them to some, is too manifest. 
In a word, a man might fill volumes with the bare 
recital only, and that from the very best authorities, of 
the impieties and senseless vanities of the fathers ; but 
indeed ecclesiastical history has done it already to our 
hands, being itself nothing but a compendium of their 
vices."* 

If we have the relations of foolish and unnatural 
stories, said to have happened nearly two thousand years 
before our time, and cannot possibly come at the true 
characters of the first relators, there is surely no evidence 
that can be relied upon ; but if the characters of the 
intermediate relaters are well known, and we have every 
reason to believe from their writings, and all we have 
been able to learn of them otherwise, that they were 

* We learn from Burnet's Exposition, that the practice of unna- 
tural lusts had been so general amongst the dignitaries of the church, 
that Saint Bernard, in a sermon preached to the clergy of France, 
affirmed sodomy to be so common in his time, that bishops with 
bishops lived in it. 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. Ill 

botli weak and enthusiastical, self-interested, and design- 
ing knaves, easily imposed on themselves when lucre led 
the way, and ever readily disposed to deceive others, 
then the relation deserves no credit whatever. " And 
such a set of men the fathers, or heads of the contending 
sects, appear evidently to have been, almost to a man, 
during the four first centuries; injudicious in all they 
relate, taken up with every idle report, uncharitable, 
ignorant of true religion, bigots, knavish in all favourite 
points of theology, and betrayers of the simple deism 
of primitive Christianity; and instead of establishing 
the books called scriptures by their testimonies, they 
have rendered them the most precarious and suspicious 
writings in the world." 

Such were the men who compiled, amended, and 
changed at pleasure, what they have called the word of 
God, founding thereon a system of religion which has 
taken root in a considerable portion of the world ; and to 
the shame of abused and credulous mankind, it has been 
established, as it were, in defiance of the light of nature, 
reason, common sense, and all experience ; and, what is 
yet still more strange and revolting, by those very means 
and agencies which men ought to hold most in contempt 
and detestation ;— viz., forgery, mystery, pretended mira- 
cles, prophecy, fraud, hypocrisy, avarice, cruelty, tyranny, 



112 LECTURE III. 

wars and massacres which have deluged the earth with 
blood, and sacrificed hundreds of millions of human 
beings to the baleful demon of superstition. 

However painful the confession may be, we are 
obliged to acknowledge that all these horrid wars and 
massacres on account of religious opinions, have afflicted 
mankind only since the introduction of Christianity, and 
during its progress for the last fifteen hundred years ; 
for, in the former times, the men called heathens, or 
pagans, had no exclusive religion, and every man was at 
full liberty to worship his God in any way he pleased ; 
every thing in their mythology was easy, pliant, and 
harmonious, and they never thought of cutting each 
others' throats on account of speculative notions in reli- 
gion, except in a few solitary instances, when goaded on 
by their priests against enlightened individuals, as in the 
case of Socrates, Aristotle, &c. ; but, generally, the 
priests thought only of multiplying the sacrifices, and 
other offerings for their own support; and they were 
even so indulgent as to permit their votaries to laugh as 
much as they pleased at the ridiculous notion of sticking 
a knife into the neck of a calf, in order to disarm the 
wrath of all the gods and goddesses, provided the veal 
was of a proper age, fat, and well flavoured. This was 
an easy, light, and jocular superstition, which, like all 



MIRACLES AND OTHER SUPERNATURALS. 113 

artificial religions, stood most endangered from disuse 
and oblivion ; and, therefore, if numerous sacrifices were 
continually offered, and Jupiter was invoked at all, the 
priests did not much concern themselves about the 
manner, or the many names under which he received 
worship and adoration ; only they took special care that 
this worship should not be deemed efficacious without 
their intervention. Thus we see that superstition suffers 
neither God, man, nor the other animals to live in peace, 
as evidently appears from the sacrifices of antiquity, as 
well as from the more gloomy and costlier religions of 
more modern invention. In those times, the foolish 
enthusiasts often saddled their family inheritances with 
an annual routine of entailed sacrifices, which burdened 
the land, and rendered it less valuable; for all purchasers 
wished to have the land sine sacris, sine sumptu, as people 
now wish to get rid of tithes. 

The numerous herd of believers in miracles, in place 
of being the best, is the very worst touchstone of truth, 
since the number of fools so far exceeds that of the wise ; 
and he is not to be thought impious who pourtrays the 
god of the priest-led multitude, but he who applies the 
opinions of the multitude to the Supreme Being. 

It has been observed elsewhere that, if the pretended 
miracles which are brought forward to prove the truth of 



114 LECTURE III. 

any set of dogmas, stand themselves equally in need of 
proof, and that proof naturally impossible, they only add 
to the string of absurdities ; and it cannot be denied, that 
all the three religions that now inthral the human mind 
in Europe, part of Africa, and a great portion of western 
Asia, have had abundance of miracles, but the code of 
the last invented one is the smallest in number, and these 
have been fabricated by Mahometan priests since the 
time of the founder. Now, since about three fourths of 
mankind are neither Jews, Christians, nor Mahometans, 
these miracles (allowing for a moment the truth of them) 
have been wrought with more partiality than justice, 
there having been thousands of millions of men who 
never heard of Moses, Jesus Christ, or Mahomet. 

6 The Supreme Being is best displayed in the fixed and 
unalterable order of nature.' 

Tully says — 

" The superstitious man, asleep or awake, 
Enjoys no repose : 
He lives not happity, 

Nor dies securely, 
Who, living and dying, 
Is a prey to silly priests." 

END OF THE THIRD LECTURE ON SUPERNATURALS. 



LECTURE IV 



Wolves shall succeed for teachers ; grievous wolves 
Who all the sacred mysteries of nature 
To their own vile advantages shall turn, 
Of lucre and ambition ; and the truth, 
Plain truth, shall then retire 

Bestuck with sland'rous darts 

So shall the world go on, 

To good malignant, to bad men benign ; 
Under her own weight groaning, till the day 
Appear of respiration to the just. 



Milton. 



ON TRUTH, AS THE BEST BOND OF 
SOCIETY. 

When the free and unprejudiced mind takes a com- 
prehensive view of the present structure of society in all 
its degrees, particularly in what are called the higher 
walks of it, the best feelings of our nature are shocked 
and outraged, on perceiving that deceit and dissimu- 
lation, are the indispensable pre-requisites in the strife of 
making way in the world, and seem to be regularly 



116 LECTURE IV. 

taught in youth, both by precept and example, so as to 
make the perfection of education to consist in the prac- 
tice of that falseness of intellectual conduct, which causes 
every man, and every woman, to appear exactly the 
reverse of what they are in reality. Nor is there any 
remedy for this horrid condition of things. " So shall the 
world go on," while superstition maintains her pestiferous 
sway ; and every attempt to remodel society from the 
foundation, will be vain and hopeless, so long as that 
arch fiend remains, to mix and poison the wholesome 
streams that flow from the pure fountain of morality ; 
for the fatal mixture of this foul ingredient has rendered 
man so depraved by errors, so tainted with the most 
atrocious crimes, and so excessively ferocious, through 
having nearly destroyed the original mildness of his 
nature, that there is now hardly any animal viler than 
man. 

' But if the principles of society were calculated for 
the general good of mankind, and founded upon a 
basis in nature, truth never could be injurious to 
any human being; and it is unsuitable to man only 
in consequence of his departure from nature, and his 
having been long immersed in the follies and super- 
stitions of an absurd education, and afraid to look 
truth in the face. There is hardly any usage or 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 117 

custom in society that is not so unnatural, false, 
and pernicious, that it may be doubted whether the 
very reverse of every one of them, would not be 
beneficial to it, and place humanity on a better footing 
than that on which it stands at present. This enormous 
mass of corruption has given rise to the beautiful allegory 
of the well: for truth, seeing herself despised, and 
her throne usurped by the hags of hypocrisy and super- 
stition, modestly creeps back into the bottom of her well, 
out of which her small still voice is seldom heard, 
drowned as it is by the thundering and overbearing tones 
of her opponents, the votaries of error, and theologic 
vision. But when mankind shall be prepared to make 
the light of nature, truth, and virtue, the only ground- 
work and bond of society, in place of human artifice, 
falsehood, and the vicious notions which they have 
always been addicted to, in forming their deity after 
their own image and character, then will truth come 
forth from the bottom of her well, and appear in her 
native loveliness and simplicity, no longer to be deemed 
injurious to the human race, as there will then be an end 
to that juggling imposture that has hitherto ruled the 
world. 

In the present distorted order of things, error is 



118 LECTURE IV. 

carefully propagated and handed down from father to 
son, from family to family, and the mind is debauched 
in early youth by the folly of impressions instilled by 
superstitious parents, and the craft of interested hirelings, 
whose visionary ravings are founded on faith in super- 
natural mysteries and prodigies ; and as that which is the 
object of faith, never can be that of reason, so we have 
bigotry and intolerance in its place. These are some of 
the unhappy results of man's having swerved so far from 
the laws and principles of his nature, as to become quite 
unnatural in almost every institution and custom in 
which his happiness is mainly concerned ;j and hence 
arise all his miseries in society. 

Amongst the numerous objections that would readily 
be started against a conformity to the laws of nature, 
a very prominent one would be to the free intercourse 
between the sexes, at which the slave of artificial society 
would take the alarm, and declare that if the laws of 
marriage did not exist as they are at present, and if love 
was not shackled by their prohibitions, how would a man 
be able to know his children if he had not the exclusive 
possession of his wife ? This is an old question, but it 
is only measuring the magnitude of an evil by others 
which surround, and are connected with it ; for while the 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 119 

whole structure of society is indeed nothing but a Pan- 
dora's box, where evil is created to prop up evil against 
the light and laws of nature, I repeat that, any attempt 
to remedy an individual ill would be unavailing ; and, 
therefore, nothing short of a radical reformation of 
society, on the basis of nature, truth, and reason, can 
restore man to that happiness which his mind and organi- 
zation are capable of enjoying. In a state well regulated 
by good and equal laws, which nourish the moral 
virtues, love would be free to man as it is to all the 
other animals, and would mainly console and sweeten 
his existence, — 

" And love made free, — a hope which we have nurst 
" As nature's choicest solace, — " 

instead of serving to be the pest of his life, as it now is 
generally; and the bringing forth of children to that 
state, under any circumstances whatsoever, would tend 
to the good repute and honor of the women, in place of 
being what it now is, a stigma, a reproach, a curse, to all 
who are not in the commonly unfortunate monopoly of 
marriage, which comprises hardly a half of the sex, whilst 
the other moiety are condemned to contend against 
nature through life. 

Laws, which appear to be a perfect rule for the most 



120 LECTURE IV. 

perfect of all things, they being no other than the laws 
of Almighty Power, must certainly be allowed to be the 
most perfect rule for the conduct of mankind. Cicero, 
who possessed the highest gifts of mind and genius, 
declares that, " it is impossible to err as long as we follow 
the guidance of nature ;" and again, — " there is no man, 
who, following the dictates of nature, may not arrive at 
perfection," — meaning all the perfection his nature is 
capable of. 

So long as man shall continue the idle attempt to 
distinguish nature from herself, and from truth, so long 
will his senses and reason be hoodwinked and bewil- 
dered; with a mind enervated by idle tales of gross 
superstitious folly, he trembles before idols, the creation 
of his own fancy; perpetually occupied in disarming 
their wrath by forms of prayer and adulation, borrowed 
from the meanest human usages, and taught him by 
those whose interest it is to uphold those systems of 
delusion, by which they enjoy in ease and affluence the 
good things of the world ; he has wantonly wasted the 
fruits of his industry in building fine houses for these 
imaginary beings to dwell in, or at least for their 
occasional accomodation ; he has sacrificed his own species 
by millions, to serve and glorify them; he has made 
psalms and ballads and sung them in their praise, in 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 121 

imitation of the flatterers of great men ; he has scourged 
himself; he has danced, he has lamented, he has clothed 
himself gorgeously ; he has gone naked, and in nasti- 
ness; he has sat upon nails run into his flesh; in a 
word, there is hardly a whim or a prank that the imagi- 
nation can devise, which has not been in exercise 
to disarm, or propitiate those unreal forms of his own 
fancy. 

To all this has man submitted in times past, and what 
is worse, he may continue to do so for centuries to come, 
before he can effectually discard the foolish mummeries 
that blind him, and rally round the standard of his 
reason, a task that is exceedingly difficult, for, as we 
have already observed, the pride of men will endure no 
correction in these matters, judging every attempt of 
the kind to be a reflection upon their understanding, 
although, in truth, these faculties of the mind had npt 
been consulted or exercised ; y etr they are ever ready to 
defend, with the most passionate obstinacy, whatever 
they have been accustomed to reverence in the shape of 
religion, or other customs, however preposterous; and 
the voice of reason prevails with few indeed. 

It has often been urged, by those who candidly 
acknowledge the prevalence of such absurd abuses, that 
it is better to sanction their continuance than to attack 



122 LECTURE IV. 

and expose them, as such notions of preternatural powers 
serve a good purpose in society, by keeping the lower 
orders in fear and subjection. But any strength that 
is in this argument, does, in reality, favour the true 
and rational side of the question, as it amounts to a 
broad admission that there is a general secession 
from the simplicity of nature, that insincerity is re- 
quired to prop up falsehood, and that errors, and 
absurd follies form the constitution and texture of 
society. 

Taking the aggregate of the pains and pleasures 
which man experiences through life, whatever may be 
his rank or condition, the probability is, that he is one 
of the least happy of all the animals that come under our 
observation ; and this preponderance of evil, which few 
will dispute, is chiefly occasioned by his egregious 
departure from nature, in his education, religion, laws, 
and customs, from which have sprung all the follies of- 
his known and acknowledged credulity: for all expe- 
rience shows that nothing is more facile than to make 
him believe the greatest absurdities, under the imposing 
names of sanctified mysteries, after having imbued him 
from his infancy with maxims calculated to suppress his 
reasoning powers — to prevent him from examining that 
which he is told he must believe, on the authority of the 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 123 

church, and that of his forefathers.* This tyranny over 
the mind is not confined to Christendom, but exists 
wherever men have been weak and silly enough to sup- 
port an expensive and luxurious priesthood ; witness the 
extent of countries, and the millions of human beings 
who, faithfully, and without examination, have adopted 
the crafty dreams, the rank and bold absurdities, of 
that most successful of all impostors, Mahomet, who 
well knew the endless credulity of the human mind, 

* Oh wearisome condition of humanity ! 

Born under one law, to another bound ; 
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity, 

Created sick, commanded to be sound. 
What meaneth nature by these diverse laws ? 
Passion and reason, self-division cause. 

Is it the mark or majesty of power 

To make offences that it may forgive ? 
Nature herself doth her own self deflower, 

To hate those errors she herself doth give ; 
For how should man think that he may not do, 
If nature did not fail and punish too ? 

We that are bound by vows and by promotion,-]- 

With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites, 
To teach belief in good and still devotion, 

To preach of heaven's wonders and delights ; 
Yet when each of us in his own heart looks, 
He finds the God there, far tinlike Ms books. 

' Chorus SacerdotumJ 

t Priests, 



124 LECTURE IV. 

and the difficulty there is in not believing those 
things that claim a supernatural original, though there 
be neither sense, argument, nor reason to confirm 
them. 

Our divines tell us, perhaps in the way of allegory, 
that the Almighty Being is said frequently to swear, and 
even to swear in wrath; that he smiles, loves, hates, 
gives, receives, wrestles, fights, &c. ,* but having no 
superior, whom can he invoke or swear by ? unless, like 
the Jupiter of old, he shakes his imperial curls in token 
of swearing by himself.* 

The only way to account for this theological nonsense 
is, that everything said of the All-ruling Power, by 
priests, is borrowed from the passions and conduct of 
men towards each other; and vainly endeavouring to 
establish an analogy that is not only vicious and imper- 
fect, but perfectly ridiculous. But even here they stop 
not, for wicked priests have represented the Supreme 
Being under opposite characters, causing him to make a 
will, or testament, which he afterwards revokes (as a 
man does), and makes another, giving rules of conduct 
in one that, are contrary to those of the other.f In this 

* Vide Iliad. 

f If God always acts for the good of his creatures, what reason 
can be assigned why he should not, from the beginning, have dis- 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 125 

case, as in all similar cases, the revoked will ought to 
have no validity ; yet our priests make use of either the 
one or the other, just as it serves their interest; telling 
us, almost in the same breath, that God has a body, and 
that he has no body ; yet still possessing a spiritual body, 
having the form and likeness of man's body, in which 
he underwent incarnation ! !* 

covered such things as make for their good, but defer the doing of 
it till the time of Tiberius ; and then, that the same God should 
receive satisfaction from, and give satisfaction to, the same God ; 
and that the same God, who thus receives and gives satisfaction, 
should neither give nor receive any satisfaction, since the Holy 
Ghost, the same God with God the Father, and God the Son, 
neither gives nor receives any satisfaction. " 

* The French priest, Menot, tells a ludicrous story about the 
incarnation. He says " that from all eternity God had made up his 
mind to send his Son for the salvation of the human race, but was 
resolved that this boon should not be granted without much 
entreaty on the part of some great personages ; and Adam, Enos, 
Enoch, Noah, Moses, David, &c, having failed successively in 
their embassy, they resolved to send some female embassadors. 
Madame Eve presented herself first, to whom God made answer, 
" Eve, thou hast sinned, thou art not worthy of my Son." After- 
wards they sent Madame Sarah, who cried " O God, do thou help 
us ;" but God said, " thou hast rendered thyself unworthy of it by 
the incredulity thou shew'dst when I informed thee that thou 
shouldst be the mother of Isaac." The third was Madame Rebecca, 
to whom God said, "thou hast done a great injury to Esau, in 
favour of Jacob." The fourth was Madame Judith, to whom God 
said, "thou art an assassin." The fifth was Madame Esther, to 
whom he said, "thou hast been too great a coquette; thou hast 



12G LECTURE IV. 

When men eminent for learning and abilities can 
with seeming seriousness maintain assertions so per- 
fectly contradictory of each other, using all the powers 
of eloquence in their defence, and hold forth such wild 
and whimsical doctrines to the ignorant and credulous, 
as being the word of the Supreme Power, there is no 
wonder that they become confounded and stupified in the 
maze of such absolute contradictions. 

" For zealous crowds in ignorance adore, 
And still the less they know, they fear the more." 

Such irrational notions and opinions amongst mankind 
are evidently founded in, and are the fruits of a pernicious 
education, infused into them as well traditionally as from 
books, confirmed by habit and example, and enforced by 
authority, to the exclusion of examination, which rarely 
takes place, as they are considered as inviolable from 
respect to their progenitors, and indubitable, because it 
is never permitted to question them : it is therefore not 
surprising that very few indeed have the intrepidity to 
examine their basis.* 

spent thy time in dressing thyself to please Ahasuems." At length 
they sent the chamber-maid, Mary, who was only fourteen years of 
age. She cast down her eyes with a bashful countenance, kneeled, 

, and was completely successful." 

* It is by stimulating mankind to inquiry that they must be freed 
from the shackles of superstition. The reign of the priesthood 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 127 

The total departure from nature and truth in matters 
of religion, lias never been known to originate amongst 
the common people, for in every instance the new 
inventions of revelation, and other changes from bad to 
worse, have sprung up in the sacerdotal order, or with 
knaves who aspire to it ; and therefore, this crime ought 
to be imputed solely to them, together with political 
rulers, who act with them for the same corrupt and 
fallacious end, in every country ; and not to the populace, 
who, moulded by habit and authority, are reduced to 
passive obedience. And when we look back to the bottom- 
less fountain of the ethnical superstitions of antiquity, 
out of which has been sewered down to us, the more 
turbid stream of modern folly and absurdity, it seems 
hopeless to find a thread of truth, by the assistance of 
which the abused laity may extricate themselves from the 
labyrinth of error, in which the great mass of them have 
all along been immersed, otherwise than by a total 



will cease when men cease to be ignorant and credulous. Then 
shall we see 

" Religion's pomp made desolate by the scorn 
Of wisdom's faintest smile." 

Credulity is the offspring of ignorance, and 
Superstition is the child of credulity. 



128 LECTURE IV. 

change in society, a radical recurrence to nature and 
reason, for they may be assured that the clergy of all 
denominations will, for the sake of the good things they 
enjoy, " Maintain those doctrines which maintain them." 
Can these men, I say, under all the temptations and 
interested prejudices this world affords, be proper per- 
sons for the laity to depend on in matters equally 
unknown to all ? — or, are they, who are not permitted to 
choose their own religion, fit to choose a religion for 
others ? 

A very intelligent author has observed, that " the dis- 
putes between Christian priests have always been scenes 
of animosity, hatred, and heresy. We find these to have 
existed since the infancy of the church. A religion 
founded on wonders, fables, and obscure oracles, could 
only be a fruitful source of quarrels. Priests attended 
to ridiculous doctrines, instead of useful knowledge, and 
when they should have studied true morality, and taught 
mankind their real duties, they only strove to gain 
adherents. They busied themselves in useless specu- 
lations on a barbarous and enigmatical science, which 
under the pompous title of the science of God, or 
theology, excited in the vulgar a reverential awe. They 
invented a bigoted, presumptious, and absurd system, as 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 129 

incomprehensible as the God whom they affected to wor- 
ship.* Hence arose disputes on disputes concerning 
puerile subtilties, odious questions and arbitrary opinions, 
which, far from being useful, only tended to poison the 
peace of society. " In these contentions, we regret to 
find the most profound geniuses occupied, and are 
forced to censure the prostitution of talents worthy of a 
better cause. The people, ever fond of turbulence, 
entered into quarrels they could not understand. Princes 
undertook the defence of those priests they wished to 
favour, and orthodoxy was decided by the longest sword. 
This assistance the church never hesitated to receive 
in times of danger; for on such occasions the clergy 
rely rather on human assistance than on the promise of 
God, who declared that the sceptre of the wicked should 
not rest upon the lot of the righteous. The heroes 



* From the very few fragments of the best pagan writers which 
Eusebius, and other fathers of the church have suffered to come 
down to us, it clearly appears that the ancient term God, or any 
other appellative such as the I-a-ho of the Phoenicians, (which 
Moses turned into Jehovah), the Isis, or Knef, of the Egyp- 
tians ; the Zeus, or Jupiter of the Greeks, &c, all of them 
being expressive of power in the superlative degree meant nothing 
more than a Personification of Nature, as the whole, or all-in-all ; 
and the inferior train of subaltern gods and goddesses signified the 
different physical powers of nature. 



130 LECTURE IV. 

found in the annals of the church, have been obstinate 
fanatics, factious rebels, or furious persecutors ; they 
were monsters of madness, sedition, and cruelty. The 
world, in the days of our ancestors, was depopulated in 
the defence of extravagancies which excite laughter in a 
posterity not indeed much wiser than they were." 

If there is a law of nature, it can be no other than the 
religion of nature, with the observance of which the 
Supreme Power will not dispense, either in itself, or in 
its creatures ; and no religion can be true that, in the 
most minute circumstance, is contrary to its invariable 
righteousness: and certainly nothing can be a greater 
libel on that only true religion, than to suppose it does 
not contain such internal marks, as will, even to the 
meanest capacity, distinguish it from all the false religions 
that now distract the world ; so as that a man, although 
unable to read in his mother tongue, may, without 
pinning his faith on any set of priests, know what the 
Almighty Power requires of him. But, under the present 
mental bondage, the mass of the people will be enabled 
to know this only by a fearless search after truth, under 
the guidance of unerring reason : in place of which, they 
hitherto have, from sloth and blind obedience, examined 
none of the marvellous things they have been taught, 
but like beasts of burden, patiently crouched down, and 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 131 

with donkey indifference, have undergone whatever their 
oppressors have laid upon them. 

When commonly received notions are attacked, and 
which cannot be defended, because they have no found- 
ation in truth and reason, the usual cry and alarm is — 
" Why will you pull down these, and substitute nothing in 
their place, to overawe and keep the multitude in order ?" 
The answer to this question is, that we have only to open 
our eyes to be convinced ; that religion, among high and 
low, restrains nobody, not even the priests who preach 
and .live by it. The most devout nations of Europe, 
such as the Spaniards and Portuguese, are alike distin- 
guished by their bigotry and corruption of manners; the 
clergy themselves show them the example of perfidy, 
cruelty, and the most unbridled licentiousness. To restrain 
men, there is need neither of falsehoods nor fables, but 
of good laws, good education, cultivated reason, science, 
good examples, rewards, and equitable punishments, — 
all these produce the most excellent morals ; ' whereas, 
when chimeras only are opposed to the irregularities of 
mankind, they are not capable of vanquishing their 
inclinations: error must be removed before truth can 
take its place, for they cannot exist for a single moment 
together; and in the present case we have only to remove 
the rotten materials of a false and groundless fabric, 



132 LECTURE IV. 

to make way for truth and the eternal reason of 
things. 

The Epicureans of old were the chief sect who held, 
and taught the mortality of the soul ; yet notwithstanding 
this opinion, they were generally esteemed as the most 
exemplary and virtuous of all the ancients, and the most 
noted for the value of their moral actions. We may 
gather from the writings of Cicero and Diogenes 
Laertius, that they did more scrupulously observe the 
laws, piety, and fidelity among men, than any other 
sect whatsoever, not excepting even the stoicks them- 
selves. They held that a man was either good or bad 
according to education and custom : being above all 
others strict observers of truth and honesty, they were 
often chosen to manage the inheritances of orphans, and 
it was common with them to rear and educate, at their 
own expense, the children of deceased friends: their 
known integrity frequently procured for them offers from 
the Roman Consuls and Emperors, to fill places of high 
employments and trusts, but these offers were often 
declined, from the strong desire they had to lead pri- 
vate lives, free from care and anxiety: they were 
not ambitious, for where a future state is utterly denied, 
there could be but little desire for posthumous renown. 

But in modern times society is in a great measure 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 133 

destitute of such pure morality, all being mixed up with 
the ever-changing alloy of theology, which is consistent 
in nothing but its exclusive interests, and in forbiding all 
inquiry into its mysteries. It has dictated creeds for the 
bulk of mankind in all countries, followed up by the 
assertion, that what is generally believed must be true ; 
but this will hold good only when men shall take nature, 
reason, andr experience, alone for their guides. Of this 
grand truth many instances might be adduced, such as 
the following : — Before the times of Copernicus and the 
famous Galileo, men were taught by their priests that 
the sun revolved round the earth, that the latter was flat 
like a table, and one-third longer than it was broad, and 
hence our terms of longitude and latitude. Copernicus 
showed the absurd falsity of these notions, and taught 
that the sun was the centre of his own, or, what is called 
the solar, system, and that the earth had a double motion — 
in revolving on its own centre, and also round the sun. 
But knowing of the hosts of priests who were ready to 
pounce upon him, if he discovered these truths openly, he 
never could be prevailed upon to publish his works until 
near the time of his death, and he lived just long enough 
to receive a corrected copy of them. Galileo, at the 
distance of more than a hundred years after the former, 
offended the holy conclave still more, in asserting, that 



134 LECTURE IV. 

the sole cause of the appearance of day and night, was 
owing to the earth's revolution on its own axis in twenty- 
four hours. These, and many other scientific discoveries 
of this great man, drew down upon his head the implac- 
able vengeance of the whole Catholic church, and he 
was condemned by that wicked conclave which calls 
itself holy, for daring to know and to propogate truths 
that are now known to every school-boy.* 

These well-attested facts ought to press strongly on 
every unprejudiced mind, leaving the lasting effect of 
showing that all such great luminaries in science, for the 
developement of natural truths, are still as unpalatable 
to clerical dominion, as ever they were at any former 
period. But to the great detriment of that dominion, the 
day of burning at the stake has now passed away in the 
reformed countries of Europe, and the light of nature 
and reason have happily gained some ground; and science, 
whose foundation is truth, has ventured to clip the wings 
of the demon of ecclesiastical power ; but nothing can be 
more certain than that the ever-living thirst after this 

• All that could be done in favor of Galileo, by the greatest an 
most learned men of his time, was merely to save him from being 
burnt by the priests : he was confined for life, and died a prisoner of 
the inquisition. 

Anaxagoras was prosecuted by the theologians of his time, for 
daring to assert that the sun was bigger than the Peloponnesus ! ! 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 135 

power, with the free inquisitorial exercise of it, will for 
ever be the same in the officers of all superstitions, so 
long as man shall have the folly to maintain an hireling 
priesthood, to drain his purse and enslave his mind. 

A modern philosopher has observed, that it was evi- 
dently from the Timseus, and other writings of Plato, that 
the early fathers of the Christian church fabricated their 
trinity, and were generally instructed in the arts of 
mystery and ambiguity ; and hence they have called him 
divine, for furnishing them with three hypostases, or 
existencies, by personifying the goodness, wisdom, and 
power of the Supreme Being, that is, by converting these 
divine attributes into so many persons. Thus, by perverting 
and twisting the obscure physicks of this philosopher to 
suit their own spiritual fantasy, they have contrived to fit 
up their trinity, and thereby to establish one of their 
strongest holds over the vulgar mind. Other grounds 
of the Christian trinity have been found in the writings 
of Plato, as when he says, " the son, the wonderful pro- 
ducer of good;" but here, under a kind of punning 
metaphor, it is evident he alludes to the sun which we 
behold, and which he calls " the most sensible image of, 
or most eximious representation of that supreme God, or 
all ruling power, of which the sun was only a repre- 
sentative, but forming a most glorious part of the 



r 
136 LECTURE IV. 

unbounded all-in-all. The "word" comes next to complete 
the Platonic trinity,* and, by this, in all probability, he 
meant only to signify the nature of all earthly things, meta- 
phorically represented by the god Pan, or Mercury, who 
according to pagan mythology, was the "word" of Jupiter, 
the then supreme god. However, out of these materials, 
the early Christian fathers drew the idea, and contrived 
to get up their trinity, from the writings of a heathen 
philosopher, who would sometimes require a revelation 
to explain him.t But his obscurity may easily be 

* The word Trinity was first used by Theophilus, bishop of 
Antioch, in the year 150, to express persons, as they are called, in 
the Godhead. The passage in the 1st epistle of John, chap. 5, v. 7, 
never appeared till the second edition of Erasmus's New Testament, 
about 1560. The 1st edition was printed in 1514, and the text 
alluded to is not in it. 

f Even the idea of Mediator is borrowed from the famous 
Zoroastes, or Zoroaster of Persia, who, according to Plutarch, 
taught, that there existed two principles, one of good, and the other 
evil ; the first was called Oromazus, or Oromasdes, the Ancient 
of Days, being the principle of good or light; the other, Arimanes, 
was the genius of evil and darkness. Between these two he placed a 
third power, called Mithras, to which the Persians gave the name of 
Mediator, and this Mithras, or Mediator, was no other than the 
physical sun, which we behold, and which was also called Triple, 
either from power, wisdom, and goodness, or from heat, light, and 
influence. Oromazus is the name which the followers of Zoroaster 
gave to the Supreme Being, and which signifies, in the Chaldean 
language, a burning light. The bad principle, Arimanes, signifies my 
enemy, or cunning and deceitful. From these principles of good 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 137 

accounted for, inasmuch that even in his day the influ- 
ence of the priests made it dangerous to speak those 
truths which exposed their arts ; for if he had expressed 
in full and clear terms the convictions of his great and 
luminous mind, he could not have escaped the fate of his 
master Socrates, who (it cannot be too often repeated), 
was put to death at the instigation of the Athenian 
priests, for his adherence to truth. 

The ancient Brahmins of India were probably the first 
who corrupted human society by the invention of spiritual, 
or celestial existencies ; and all the successive religions 
that have sprung up in the west, (and they have been 
many in number), have adopted the same machinery, 
varied according to time and place. And from the past we 
are warranted in concluding that new religions will 
always be springing up, all inimical to truth and reason, 
nineteen in every twenty of which will fail to take root, 
and a very few, from particular circumstances, will be 
successful and flourish for a time — perhaps for many 
centuries — and then be exploded in their turn, to 
make place for others invented to suit the interested 

and evil were taken also, the Osiris and Typhon of the Egyptians, 
the Jupiter and Pandora of the Greeks, the Jehovah and Satan of 
the Jews, as well as the God and Devil of the Christians. The 
idea of a Mediator is not only derogatory of, but virtually denies, 
the infinite mercy of the Supreme Power. 



138 LECTURE IV. 

views of theologians, leagued with tyrannical govern- 
ments. 

In such a manner have mankind been always abused, 
and as there seems to be, unhappily, a large portion of 
credulity in man's very nature, which easily subjects him 
to such thraldom of the mind, nothing but the strongest 
efforts of natural reason, aided by the impartial school of 
experience, and the utter exclusion of all artificial 
religions, can enable him to overthrow the altars of 
error, and guide him in the paths enlightened by nature 
and common sense ; for it may be taken as a general rule, 
that whatever is contrary to nature is against reason, and 
whatever is against reason ought be rejected as absurd. 

To the free and unprejudiced inquirer, it cannot but 
appear perfectly plain, that in Christian society, from the 
earliest times, theology has ever exerted itself in the 
suppression of all natural truths of the higher order, 
wherever man has had the genius to discover them, in- 
somuch as virtually to admit that any deep knowledge of 
nature, is so incongruous with theology, that they can 
have no existence together; and numerous instances 
might further be adduced, such as the following : — Virgil, 
bishop of Saltzburgh, was condemned by the church for 
daring to maintain the existence of the Antipodes. The 
great Descartes died in a foreign land, from church 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 139 

persecution. Julius Vanini was burnt by the clergy for 
saying that " God is both the beginning and the end, 
without being in need of either ; in no one place,, yet 
present every where ; he is within and without every- 
thing, his power is his will." For such tenets did the 
theologians burn poor Vanini ; and the learned Stephen 
Dolet, was burnt by the inquisition for exposing the 
clergy and asserting the unity of God. Thus, in all 
ages, has religion been employed as an instrument in 
the persecution of great men. " Thus has superstition 
incessantly disturbed the harmony of mankind, raised 
up the most inextinguishable flames of hatred and 
discord, arming the infuriate maniacs to strew the earth 
with unhappy victims to madness and error ;* peaceable 
and innocent victims, whose only crime was in using their 
own reason, and their inability to dream after the 



* "The inhabitants of the new world were not treated as men, 
because they were not Christians. This prejudice, more degrading 
to the tyrants than the victims, stifled all sense of remorse ; and 
abandoned, without control to their inextinguishable thirst for gold 
and for blood, those greedy and unfeeling men that Europe dis- 
gorged from her bosom. The bones of five millions of human 
beings have covered the wretched countries to which the Spaniards 
and Portuguese transported their avarice, their superstition, and 
their fury. These bones will plead to everlasting ages against the 
doctrine of the political utility of religions, which is still able to 
find its apologists in the world." 



140 



LECTURE IV. 



manner of their persecutors." All of which shows clearly 
the truth that, the wild delirium of fanaticism is as 
incompatible with the calm tranquillity of reason, as 
fire is with water. 

Mankind will never be disposed to use their own 
strength, or make free inquiry whilst an undisturbed 
laziness, ignorance, and prejudice, give them full satisfac- 
tion as to the truth of their opinions ; but where there is a 
sincere desire to elicit truth, she will never want profes- 
sors; and she can never be wholly banished, exceptwhere 
human decisions, backed by power, carry all before 
them, putting men out of the way of truth by mere 
force of authority ; for when the Magistrate, the Church, 
and the zeal of that numerous class who believe all that 
divines tell them, unite their strength, the three make 
the most formidable bond imaginable against the just 
liberties of mankind. 

In the diiferent systems of revealed religion that 
hitherto have, and now continue to distract the world, 
the dogmatical machinery of the various churches, have 
been nearly the same in all, admitting of no other proof 
than what arises from faith and ignorance ; the first being 
a quiet and sottish submission of the judgment, to the 
guidance and control of others, who are deeply inter- 
ested in the maintenance of those delusions which support 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 141 

them, — submission of that judgment which the ruling 
power of nature bestowed upon every individual, for the 
study of her own broad book, in which alone is to be 
found the only true religion. " Father Garasse, of the 
Jesuits, declared that he could very easily invent a much 
better religion than any of those that now divide and 
disturb the world, if he could only pick up a dozen of 
scoundrels, who would submit themselves to be burnt in 
defence of his notions." 

A great poet has said, " that things naturally bad make 
strong themselves by ill." So, in like manner, things 
that are in themselves absurd and unnatural, are not only 
strengthened, but rendered all-powerful by superstitious 
folly and credub'ty, which, in the fulness of their power, 
have shed oceans of human blood in support of fantastical 
whimsies, which have been turned into theological 
dogmas, that are inconsistent with, and entirely beyond 
the conception of reason, giving birth to the most 
rancorous spirit of discord. 

If any man of an impartial and enlightened mind 
should address himself to the contending parties in a 
manner such as the following — " The men who lived in 
the world three thousand years ago, appear to have been 
better men than you are, and had no disputes about 
religion, but served their God, or gods, just in any way 



142 LECTURE IV. 

they pleased, and with the only union required, the union 
of affection amongst themselves," — all that such a man 
would get by this admonition would be, to be called 
Atheist by both the hostile parties, and persecuted 
accordingly. 

To arrive at the purest standard of morality, it is 
necessary that the minds of men should break the 
shackles of superstitious respect, know the limits which 
ought, and will, eternally separate reason from all the 
systems of revealed religion, and remove the obstacles 
placed against its progress by the corrupt legislator, the 
priest, and the fanatic; the two former will never fail 
to exert their united influence in fostering and protect- 
ing ignorance, as the surest means of giving stability to 
their power ; and it is hereby that they render them- 
selves the most cruel enemies of the human race. Men 
generally are more stupid than wicked; and in curing 
them of the errors which arise from sluggish credulity, 
we should cure them at the same time of most of 
their vices; and whoever endeavours to oppose that 
cure, commits the crime of treason against human 
nature. 

The base and servile timidity which dreads inquiry 
into things reputed divine, generates a blind and scru- 
pulous attachment to the superstitions imbibed in youth, 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 143 

making a vast majority of mankind become the fools of 
the common folly, whatever that may happen to be,* 
and the more foolish an opinion is, the more readily will 
it be received as praiseworthy, and consequently, the 
more dangerous it will be to prove its folly. 

Nature speaks to man in the following language : — 
" It is in vain, O thou fantastical being, to seek after 
"happiness beyond the limits of universal matter in 
6( which I have placed thee ; in vain dost thou expect it 
" in those fanciful regions which have no existence but 
" in thine own delirious imagination, which is filled with 
" capricious systems and illusions, the baneful effects 
" of an absurd education, inculcated in youth by selfish 
" and interested men, who have taught thee to depart 
" from the simplicity of my laws, which are mild and easy 
" in comparison with those of theological bigotry. The 
" tyranny of the mind is unknown in my dominion : 
" benevolence and humanity, the offspring of wise and 
" equitable laws, are the fruit of the soil, and imposture, 
"with his obscuring mists, are unknown in the land. 
" As members of society, be kind, be just, be virtuous, 

* Grotius, in quoting Curtius, says — " The multitude, ensnared 
by superstition, are more apt to be governed by their priests than 
princes; and that kings and emperors have learnt this at their 
cost, insomuch that to produce examples of this kind, would in a 
manner be transcribing the history of all nations." 



144 LECTURE IV. 

" be merciful, and peace of mind will be your portion. 
" But beware of the transient pleasure that arises from 
" seductive crime, for it is I who punish the crimes of the 
" fanatical wicked, who are blind to my laws, and shudder 
"with horror at the name of truth and sacred reason 
" — those free gifts which I have bestowed on man. 
" Waste not, therefore, your substance in supporting 
"priests, those costly drones of human society that 
" eat up the fat of the land, spreading their useless 
" systems of pretended revelation : but there is no reve- 
" lation except that which I have, with perfect impartiality, 
" made to you all, and which is perpetually before your 
" eyes — the broad book of nature, — in which there is no 
" imposture, and which requires not an expensive priest- 
" hood to expound its mysteries, but only reason and ex- 
" perience to conduct you to happiness. The earth is 
" teeming with my benefits and bounties, yet ye starve 
" yourselves to feed the locusts that prey upon you. Re- 
" turn to me therefore, thou misled being, and let the 
" basis of thy social laws be in accordance with mine — 
" with the laws of that power which called thee into 
" organized existence ; for of all the animals inhabiting 
" the millions of globes which revolve in the endless ple- 
" num, thou hast departed the farthest from me, as thy 
" crimes witness against thee — crimes, in the commission 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 145 

" of which thou standest alone amongst all the other 
" animals." 

In such language does nature cry aloud to man, but 
she calls in vain, while he continues in the besotted 
belief of what his interested guides have taught about 
fallacious divinities, the splendid trumpery of superna- 
tural, and seeing visions, the workings of human fancy ; 
— while he shuts his eyes to the physical realities which 
surround him, and which never deceive his senses. Such 
is the language ever held by unerring reason, which is 
marked by the contempt and detestation of the priest, 
insulted by the fanatic, and left unexercised by the 
stupid devotee who follows those wild reveries that over- 
whelm common sense, and which man can neither prac- 
tise nor understand ; making it consequently a virtue to 
favour imposture, which constantly endeavours to en- 
trench itself artfully behind the rampart of truth. " But 
the worshipper of truth will never compromise with 
falsehood — the adorer of nature will not be the apostle 
of deceitful chimeras, turning this world into an abode of 
illusions," and by a total departure from truth, reason, 
and virtue, destroying the happiness of the human 
race. 

On taking a view of the numerous traditionary reli- 
gions which have overspread the earth, all pretending to 



146 LECTURE IV. 

divine revelation, we readily allow the gross falsehoods 
and absurd notions which the priests of all have impu- 
dently imposed on their silly followers. Yet our own 
priests, forsooth, must always be allowed to be such 
faithful representers of truth, that we may as well deny 
all historical facts as doubt the truth of things believed 
on their authority. Priests of other religions, we know, 
will propagate falsehoods to support their own interest ; 
and knowing that no revealed religion will bear exami- 
nation, they take care to have them guarded by penal 
laws. But, I pray you, my friend, have not our own 
priests done all these things ? 

We have only to consult ecclesiastical history, to find 
that the worst of tyrannical princes nave been the most 
sure of obtaining the assistance of the theologians of all 
religions, even for the purposes of carrying on the vilest 
and most barbarous designs, provided the interest of the 
church was promoted in so doing. And any prince, 
having the good intention to forward and protect the 
interest of pure natural religion, free from priestcraft 
and superstition, was sure to meet with their most ran- 
corous opposition.* In mixing up chimerical notions in 

* " The ambitious man, who is raised above his fellow-citizens ; 
the tyrant who tramples them under his feet, and the fanatical 
priest who keeps them prostrate; all these several scourges of the 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 147 

their religions — fooleries equally inconsistent with the 
invariable nature of the All-ruling Power and the good 
of man, they have even had the audacity to declare, that 
the common people will never be influenced by, or satis- 
fied with, plain and simple truths; and therefore the 
supernatural weapons of inspirations, visions, conference 
with spirits, trances, extasies, miracles, and the fires of 
hell, were absolutely necessary to keep them in order : 
and from this foul source have issued most of those 
absurdities which, to the shame and scandal of mankind, 
have overrun human nature. " Indeed so doltish have 
the laity generally been, and so seldom have they 
thought of asserting their natural rights in matters of 
religion, that they have commonly sacrificed to the 
malice of the priests, all who have endeavoured to main- 
tain these rights ; and as often as the people have suc- 
ceeded in throwing off one set of ecclesiastical tyrants, it 



human race, all these different kinds of flagitious men, forced by 
their private interest to establish laws contrary to the general good* 
have been sensible that their power had no other foundation than 
the ignorance and weakness of mankind. They have therefore 
imposed silence on whosoever, by discovering to the people the 
true principles of morality, would have opened their eyes with 
respect to their misfortunes and their rights, and have armed them 
against injustice." 



148 LECTURE IV. 

has been only to become slaves to another. Yet they 
have ever been ready to join against any one who endea- 
voured to set them free for all theological tyranny.* In 
former times it is too notorious that, whenever a gleam 
of light issued from a mind capable of discerning the 
path of truth, it was immediately extinguished in the 
blood of its author. 

It is a sad, and I hope an unjust reflection upon 
human nature, that in the most ancient times of which 
we have any any records, as well as in the present, the 
bulk of mankind were held to be unfit to hear the truth. 
Clemens of Alexandria declares, that the greater pagan 
mysteries were open to none but men of superior rank, 
education, merit, and learning; and Varro says they 
were instituted for the conveyance of certain truths, 
which it was not expedient the people should know. 
Now, these mysteries detected and disclosed to the ini- 
tiated alone the errors and absurdities of the vulgar 
polytheism, whilst they taught the union of the Supreme 
Being, or nature. Thus also Parmenides, in his Exote- 

* Aristippus says that, " to be able to think is to draw upon 
ourselves the irreconcileable hatred of the ignorant, the weak, the 
superstitious, and the corrupt, who all loudly declare themselves 
against those who would take hold of, and maintain the truth." 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 149 

rics, or books accommodated to the public taste, says, 
" fire and water are the beginning or principle of all 
things," as if he had acknowledged the creation of 
matter ; but in his Esoterics, or books composed accord- 
ing to truth, he says, " the universe is one, infinite, and 
immutable. 17 

The origin of man (as we have elsewhere observed) 
and the ridiculous distinctions which vanity and selfish- 
ness have drawn between him and the rest of animated 
nature, have given rise to the wildest arrogance of con- 
jecture, whilst what appears to be the plain and simple 
truth in this matter, has been kept as much in the back 
ground as it usually is in all points which admit not of 
demonstration. The origin of man, and the propagation 
of the species, perfectly resemble that of other animals, 
and the cause of the existence of all, is in the very 
existence itself. If we examine the actions and 
behaviour of many of those we call brutes, such as the 
monkey, the elephant, the beaver, &c, it is perfectly 
evident that they could not act in the manner they do, 
without a mind and understanding ; and these faculties 
being proved in them beyond all contradiction, why 
then, O ye fanatics, will ye deny them this undefinable 
something called soul, which ye say yourselves are 



150 LECTURE IV. 

possessed of ? Permit me to answer the question. It is 
your excessive pride and self-love,* which are mainly 
nursed and cherished by the illusions of a preternatural 
futurity, which your priests buoy you up with, in 
exchange for the pampered luxury and ease enjoyed 
by them through your credulity. Well, you at last 
reluctantly grant that the other animals have souls ; but 
in making this concession, you contend, as your last 
refuge, that such paltry half-inch souls as theirs, are not 
worthy to be immortal, as those of men are, and con- 
sequently perish with the body.f Here again is another 
distinction that is equally worthy of the pride and self- 
love of man, and of theological ingenuity, for it is the 
pure offspring of both; but the truth of it is utterly 
denied by nature and reason. This story of the soul's 
immortality must have been unknown, or at least not in 

* Lord Bolingbroke observes, that from an excess of pride, man 
avoids and hates everything that in the least assimilates him to the 
brute, and consequently gets out of sight when he performs the 
business of procreation, as well as in some other humiliating 
actions, by which he seems to think his dignity is lowered, and 
which place him on the same level with the quadruped. — Philo- 
sophical Essays. 

f "It is well known that even the Pharisees among the Jews 
did not openly maintain the doctrine of the immortality of the 
soul, and of rewards and punishments after death, until about the 
time of Herod." 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 151 

vogue at the time in which it is said that Moses lived, 
since no allusion whatever is made to it throughout the 
books attributed to him.* It is true, that amongst the 
ancient Chaldeans, Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Greeks, 
a notion existed that the vital part of animals was im- 
mortal (which probably had its rise in the Metempsy- 
chosis), and no one could deny that this vital part was 
breath, since the body dies instantly when deprived of 
it. The next difficulty was, of what is it composed ?f 
Some said air, others fire, others ether; and a fourth 
class declared that it was the requisite compound of the 
above elements, adjusted by nature, so as to sustain 
animal life; this was the pneuma of the Greeks, and the 
anima of the Latins, to which they attached no other 
meaning than simply the breath of life, in all animals ; 
and when it left the body, at death, it was said to fly 
upwards in joining the lighter, or more subtle elements 

* Aristotle maintained the eternity of matter, and did not believe 
that the Supreme Governing Power of the universe, extended any 
particular providence to sublunary things, and as for the immor- 
tality of the soul, it seems to have been quite inconsistent with 
his principles ; " yet he was at one and the same time, the Master 
of the Theologians, and the chief of the Atheists." 

f When the theologian is pressed to tell what soul or spirit is, 
he is obliged to resort to the negative, by telling what it is not. 

"Philosophy consists in stopping when the torch of physical 
science fails us." 



152 LECTURE IV. 

to which it belongs ; and these elements being eternal, 
the soul, in this sense, may justly be entitled to what is 
called immortality. Philosophers reasoned after the 
above manner long before the time of Plato ; but he 
gave a new light on the subject, by declaring that 
the soul was a compound of the same, and the other, — a 
most divine definition indeed! and admirably well calcu- 
lated for the use of the fathers of our holy church ; for 
out of it they could make anything they pleased. It has 
already been observed that, the obscure writings of this 
philosopher was the ordinary source from whence the 
fathers drew their mysticisms ; and in this instance he 
has furnished them with the idea of those souls which 
the theologians of the present times traffick in, and which 
they turn to such excellent account. 

The soul, then, is nothing but an empty term, of 
which we can form no idea, and which a man of a right 
understanding ought to make use of only to express that 
part or faculty in us which thinks. # 

* Amongst the pagans, Pliny spoke the fullest and plainest on 
this subject, — thus, " After the interment of our bodies, there is a 
great diversity of opinions concerning the future state of our souls, 
or ghosts ; but the most general is this, that they return to the same 
state in which they were before they were born. However, such 
is the folly and vanity of men, that they extend its existence even to 
future ages; and some crown it with immortality, others pretend a 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 153 

In treating of impostors in this, and the foregoing 
lectures on miracles, the writer distinctly and unequivo- 
cally disclaims all intention of placing Jesus Christ at 
the head of the impostors of Christianity, because he is 
fully convinced, after the most impartial investigation of 
the subject, that the person in question ought rather to be 
considered as the Socrates, (in epitome), of the Jews, 
and resembling in many points of character, and perse- 
cuted virtue, several of the philanthropists of the present 
day ; for, like them, his whole aim and endeavour was to 
release his countrymen from the superstitious thraldom 
of their priests, — to establish amongst them a pure 
and practical morality, and laws calculated to guide 
them in paths more congenial to nature, and their 

transfiguration, and others render unto the soul of the departed, 
honour and worship, making a god of him that was not so much 
as a man; as if the manner of men's breathing differed from that of 
other living creatures, or as if there were not to be found in the 
world many animals that live much longer than man. Now these 
are surely but fantastical, foolish, and childish toys, devised by men 
who would fain live always ; the like foolery is there in preserving 
the bodies. But what a folly of follies it is to think that death 
should be the way to a second life ! Certainly this foolish credulity, 
and easiness of belief, destroy the benefit of the best gift of nature, 
— death. How much more easy, and greater security were it for 
each man to ground his reasons and resolutions upon an assurance, 
that he should be in no worse a condition than he was before he 
was born !"— Nat. Hist. 



154 v LECTURE IV. 

true happiness : that such alone were his views, is 
proved to satisfaction in the single circumstance of his 
having all the priests of his day as his most bitter 
enemies ; and by them, and their blind-led abetters, he 
was put to death for exposing the irrationality and folly 
of their absurd systems. That such should be the result 
of his earnest exertions to benefit mankind, is no way 
surprising, for all experience assures us that, without 
the protection of wise and equitable laws, no description 
of priests that the world has yet seen, would have 
suffered such a man to live, and be the occasion of 
destruction to their trade; a consequence inevitable, 
because his religion was too natural and too simple to 
require a hireling priesthood. His doctrine was the 
system of nature, of which he appears to have been the 
enthusiastic admirer, as may be shown from many of the 
aphorisms and parables attributed to him ; such, for 
instance, as that in Luke, chap. 6th, v. 48, where his 
intention is to compare the follower of the religion of 
nature to a man who lays the foundation of his house 
upon a rock; and in the same book, chap. 12th, v. 27, 
we have the beautiful simile of the lilies, evincing 
thereby his reverence towards the common parent of all 
existence. 

As a follower of nature, he would have abolished 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 155 

marriage, his aversion to which seems to have been 
notorious amongst his acquaintance, and what he says 
in Luke, chap. 20th, v. 34, is confirmatory of that 
aversion; but when he admonishes, as he does in 
Matthew, chap. 5th, v. 34, saying, "swear not at all" 
he abolishes marriage in the most positive manner. 
When he says, "what God has joined together, let no 
man put asunder," he assuredly means, that while mutual 
love and concord join a couple happily together, no 
man should put them asunder, because, in so doing he 
would commit a crime against nature, in disturbing the 
union of congenial hearts ; but it is utterly impossible he 
should mean to include, or have any allusion to, the vast 
majority of marriages, which are cemented by Mammon 
and the priest, wherein nine-tenths of the parties turn 
out to be mutual torments to each other. He was no 
doubt desirous to render marriage that which reason 
requires it should be, viz., a simple contract only, and 
dissolvable at the pleasure of the parties ; and so it was 
originally, until the usurpations of the church made it a 
sacrament, or divine obligation, thereby converting it 
into that which the generality of mankind have found it 
to be — a life-lasting bond of the most woful description; 
and so confessedly was it so, that the priests of former 
times took special care to preserve for themselves the 



156 LECTURE IV. 

privilege of being exempt from its trammels. Matthew, 
Mark, and Luke, state severally, that certain questions 
were put to him (Jesus) regarding marriage and divorce ; 
and it is quite evident that these questions were put 
solely with the view of entrapping him into such answers 
as would have been contrary to the Jewish laws, and 
thereby afford the priests a pretext for seizing him ; so 
he seems to have been on his guard accordingly; 
but as to the precise answers which he gave to these 
questions, the three Evangelists are as much at variance 
with each other, as they are in almost everything else. 
He must have been satisfied, that if marriage was 
abolished, adultery could have no existence ; for the 
former unnatural yoke, is not only the cause of the 
latter crime, but constitutes its criminality; carrying 
along with it at the same time, thousands of other evils 
which are entailed on a vast portion of the female sex ; 
— first, because the galling shackles of monogamy 
prevent nearly the half of the male sex from entering 
into a state, where misery is so likely to follow for life ; — 
and secondly, because of the false and preposterous 
odium which the perverse condition of society has 
attached to poor unhappy woman, if she follows the 
impulse of nature ; and if she resists that impulse, another 
abyss of misery is before her, and she becomes the prey 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 157 

of a certain malady, in the paroxysms of which, the 
mode of gratification will not be much considered ; and 
if the necessities of nature find not a remedy, the 
unhappy sufferer falls the victim of a disease, for the 
cure of which the world is full of physicians. He must 
have been of opinion also, that prostitution is only a 
consequence of marriage, for without the latter, the 
former could have no existence : in short, he seems to 
have fully coincided in opinion with two of the ancient 
sages in regard to matters of love. Plato, in his republic, 
abolished marriage ; and Zeno declared, " that women 
ought to be unrestrained in their amours, in order that 
that their children might be equally dear to all men. 
Jesus evidently wished to annul paternity also ; as 
appears from the admonition he gives in Matthew 23rd, 
and v. 9th ; and he elsewhere declares that " all children 
proceed from the spirit of nature, or God, and in regard 
to himself, he never would acknowledge any other 
paternity." 

The principal impostors in Christianity (Paul perhaps 
excepted) arose some centuries subsequent to the time of 
Jesus, and they have fallaciously reared up, and ascribed 
to him, a theological fabric, so monstrous, chimerical, and 
absurd, as to be altogether inconsistent with his principles 
and views — with the generous exertions he made to 



158 LECTURE IV. 

enlighten his countrymen in the laws of nature, and with 
the truth and simplicity of his doctrines. 

He was a teacher of such men only as would receive 
the truth with pleasure, — he found few of these; but 
that did not prevent his teaching, or, at least, his en- 
deavours to teach that very system that was afterwards 
held forth, and taught by Justin Martyr, viz, " that 
Christ (or Chrestus, which signifies any good man), the 
first begotten of God, means nothing else but reason, of 
which all mankind are partakers ; and all those that live 
by or according to reason, though they are esteemed 
atheists, and worshippers of no God, are Christians; 
and such were Socrates, and the like." 

Every age, as well in ancient as in modern times, has 
produced a few of these, the disguised or oppressed 
friends and adherents of truth and reason, some of whom, 
in one way or other, became the victims of priestly 
rage ; and others, from possessing less of moral courage, 
were reduced to silence, giving way to the torrent of 
power, which is chiefly supported by men who even 
glory in rejecting that light which reason oifers to them ; 
whilst they are ever ready in supporting theological 
speculations, which no one understands, and which 
have so frequently disturbed the repose of the world, 
through the stubborn dispositions of those who give 



TRUTH, THE BEST BOND OF SOCIETY. 159 

them credence; whereas they ought to be treated as inven- 
tions calculated to give scope to knaves and jugglers, to 
apply them for the purposes of deception. 

The laity of the present day are become pretty gene- 
rally acquainted with the audacious impositions of the 
church of Rome, and are astonished at the childish 
credulity of their progenitors; but they seem far from 
perceiving, or duly acknowledging, the very few acci- 
dental circumstances upon which depended the incom- 
plete reformation of the church, which took place in the 
sixteenth century. This rested wholly on the honest, 
truth-loving boldness of two or three men, who happened 
to be more enlightened than those around them; and 
but for this fortuitous event alone, the mass of mankind 
in Europe would have continued in the same grovelling 
submission to knavery, and Catholic delusion up to this 
very hour. And how were these men treated and 
esteemed in their day, by the adherents of superstition? 
The exposures they made, and their writings, were looked 
upon, and treated by the whole Roman church, precisely 
in the same manner as the writings of Thomas Paine 
are now treated by the votaries of superstition through- 
out Great Britain, — " Not all the devils in hell," cried 
the Catholic priests, "can equal the blasphemous wicked- 
ness of Martin Luther, and his impious adherents." But 



160 LFXTURE IV. 

behold the result of this pretended wickedness ! The 
reformed countries of Europe bear witness at this day, 
of the salutary effects produced by even the partial 
victory that was then gained over superstitious tyranny. 
The reformers went but half way in the work that was 
required by reason and common sense, — " they but 
scotched the snake, not killed it." For in England, and in 
Ireland, the church still forms an incubus that is almost 
as grievous upon human industry as ever it was at any 
former period. Still let us do the reformers the justice 
they deserve, by confessing that, although they did only 
a half of the work, they wrought wonders, and it was 
perhaps impossible for man to do more at the time, more 
especially when we consider the extreme tenaciousness 
with which mankind adhere to the superstitious follies 
of early youth. They went great lengths in venturing 
to expose the enormous extent to which clerical usur- 
pations had reached ; but any attempt at that period, to 
compel the clergy to relinquish all their temporal advan- 
tages, would have been fruitless, and would have made 
them fly to arms much more readily than even the 
attempt to rend the veil wherewith they concealed the 
truth. 

THE END OF LECTURE THE FOURTH. 



DIALOGUE, 



PHYSIOLOGICAL 



AND 



THEOLOGICAL. 



" Man has lost himself in the wanderings of a fantastic imagination, in the 
fleeting dreams of fanaticism, and the malignant fury of a blind superstition ; he 
has sought for truth where it is not to be found : his mind has diverged from the 
line of reality, and he has become the victim of innumerable prejudices." ' 

Ignorance becoming triumphant, begets credulity ; credulity unavoidably occa- 
sions lies, and lies have recourse to force for their support against reason. 



LONDON 



PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR, BY 

JOHN BROOKS, 421 OXFORD STREET. 



MDCCCXXXIII. 



DIALOGUE. 



Lest j r ou should start at these bold truths, and fly 
These lines, as maxims of impiety ; 
Consider that religion did, and will 
Contrive, promote, and act the greatest ill. 

Lucretius. 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 

Mod. — I have observed, Strato, that your opinions 
on most subjects are strangely at variance with those 
that are sanctioned by the highest authorities of the 
church and state ; and when a man differs so very widely 
in his way of thinking from the generally received 
notions of his countrymen, and those around him, his 
reasons ought to be well founded, and he ought to be 
sure in his own mind that there is no mixture of 
affected singularity in the matter. 

Strato. — The remark you have just made is very 
true, but if these reasons appear to him clear, satis- 
factory, and conclusive, it is quite impossible for him 
to think otherwise ; and one of our most enlightened 



\ 



4 DIALOGUE. 

divines allows, that a man cannot believe and disbelieve 
at pleasure, inasmuch as belief is not the work of the 
will, but of the judgment alone, and arises irresistibly 
upon conviction ; and therefore, to assert that a man 
is bound to believe either one thing or another, is so 
far from being true, that it is not common sense. 

Mod. — I have no difficulty in granting your position, 
yet still a man may be a good member of society, ful - 
filling in an exemplary manner all the moral duties, 
and glide quietly through life, while he believes, or 
fancies he believes, in all those popular notions, which 
you are pleased to call the preposterous delusions that 
guide the great herd of mankind. 

Strato. — This is precisely the case with ninety-nine 
in every hundred of the human race, in all countries ; 
they either cannot, or will not think for themselves ; 
and it is in vain that nature sometimes sends amonsfst 
them a spark of her own fire, to enlighten the mind of 
genius and penetration, for every ray of the light of 
truth gives offence, and they shrink with horror at the 
idea of giving way to inquiry, so fettered are their 
minds with the bands of early impressions, the pre- 
judices of education; — this uniformly applies to the 
weak and the ignorant, who are very numerous, and 
not always confined to the working classes, — besides, 



STltATO AND MODERATUS. 5 

few will readily " separate themselves from error, when 
vanity, the companion of ignorance, has rendered it 
dear to them." 

Mod. — Allowing what yon have said to pass for the 
present, still matters are not in reality the worse on 
that account, for in every age and country of the 
world, the lower orders of mankind have always been 
weak and credulous, and their minds governed by an 
order of men who are appointed and paid to think for 
them ; and this condition of things forms one of the 
strongest bonds of society, for its peace and security : 
so that which you complain of is so far from being an 
evil, that I am reluctantly induced to believe, that the 
more irrational and absurd the superstition is, so much 
the better does it answer the intended purpose ; ambi- 
guity, mystery, and obscurity, coming in as useful 
auxiliaries, and are indeed the main pillars that support 
the superstructure ; so here is a positive good arising 
out of what you denounce as an intolerable evil. But, 
to change the subject, what do you think of the 
peopling of America ? 

Strato. — You might as well ask me how the oak 
and the ash got there — who carried over the dogs, cats, 
hogs, &c. &c, for I am quite satisfied that the same 
power which produced animals and trees in the other 



b DIALOGUE. 

parts of the world, produced them in America also. 
But why do you insist on having that hemisphere 
peopled from Asia, when the proposition might with 
equal propriety be reversed, in maintaining that Asia 
was peopled from America ? The plain truth of the 
matter is undoubtedly this, that the discovery of this 
vast portion of the globe, was a stumbling block to the 
theological worthies of our holy church, and placed a 
considerable portion of the ground-work of their edifice 
in a ludicrous point of view; for the heavenly in- 
spirations of the early fathers of our church, did not, 
it seems, convey even a single hint of the existence of 
that immense continent ; but since the restless inno- 
vations of profane science (which the church dislikes 
above all things) did make that discovery, the priests 
found themselves under the necessity of peopling it in 
the best way they could, and in as straight a line from 
father Adam as possible : so to work they went with all 
the zeal and anxiety which the untowardness of the case 
inspired ; but, working against nature, as they always 
do, they have made a most bungling and laughable 
business of it. If bishop Eusebius, of Csesaria, had 
been alive, he would have peopled the western hemis- 
phere with more address and plausibility than all of 
them put together. 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 7 

The thesis laid down is, that America was peopled 
from Asia, and the antithesis goes to establish the 
reverse ; but both propositions will appear equally 
absurd, when we consider the perfectly different spe- 
cies of man found upon each continent $* for the 
white-skinned native of northern Asia, could no 
more beget the copper-coloured, beardless native of 
America, than a bull dog could beget a fox, — the 
Negro of Africa, the Laplander ; the leopard, the lion ; 
the ass, the horse ; or an Esquimaux, a Hottentot, &c. 
No one species could by any possibility spring unmixed 
from any of the others, because of the specific dis- 
tinctions made by nature herself, f and she has, in 



* " None, but those who are blind, can have any doubt that the 
whites, the negroes, the Albinos, the Hottentots, the Laplanders, 
the Chinese, and the Americans," are altogether different species, 
although they perhaps come under the genus Homo. 

-j- The grandsons of Noah, as soon as they were landed from the 
ark, had a Herculean task to perform,— the sons of Ham, for no 
fault of their own, were exiled to the interior of Africa, and the 
coasts of Guinea and Congo, a distance of more than five 
thousand miles, there to beget a prodigious number of children 
of a species of Homo, entirely different from their own, with 
skins as black as ebony. " Magog, Tubal, and Gomer, after sub- 
duing Germany, Spain, and Gaul, had to propagate their own 
species in begetting vast quantities of children, with white skins, 
to people those countries, in a very few years. Even children in 
the nursery now begin to laugh at such obscene absurdities." 



8 DIALOGUE. 

her own immaculate way, wonderfully adapted every 
animal and every plant on the earth, for the particular 
region or climate, where each of the various kinds 
is produced; the pride and prejudice of man not- 
withstanding. 

Mod. — You seem to have forgotten, or rather not to 
have reap!, the many goodly volumes written by divines 
and others, all clearly proving that America must 
have been peopled from Asia ; — since we are told from 
authority, which it is not permitted us to doubt, that 
the first human being was produced there by a miracle, 
and that being was Adam, from whom all the different 
varieties of homo have sprung. 

Strato. — All your deductions arise from your build- 
ing upon false and groundless premises, and drawing 
conclusions from such premises as never have for a 
moment been admitted in the eye of reason ; and as for 
your Jewish story about the first man called Adam, his 
wife Eve, and a serpent, to say nothing of its gross 
impiety, it is too silly and ridiculous for old women to 
tell in the nursery. A very few philosophers who 
ventured to exercise their own reason on this grand 
subject, "had the boldness to affirm that nature had 
always produced in America, the animals and plants that 
were proper to the climate and soil;" but as these 



STRATO AND MODERATES. V 

rational and home arguments struck at the the root of 
that old and rotten system, which our theologians are so 
much interested in upholding, there is no wonder in 
their taking the alarm, and endeavouring, by their usual 
methods, to stifle sense and the common suggestions of 
nature ; and this they attempt by strings of ridiculous 
conceits and absurdities, which excite only the smile of 
the lovers of truth, but unhappily hold fast upon the 
credulity of the great bulk of mankind, who are ever 
ready to believe fabulous narrations, and take part with 
the marvellous, against nature and reason. 

Mod. — Whatever may be the subject under inquiry, 
you seldom fail to reflect on the ecclesiastical order, as 
a class of men who are chiefly blameable for the apathy 
and ignorance of the lower orders of the people, and 
perhaps for their vices also; but this is unfair and 
illiberal, for priests are neither better nor worse than 
other men ; and having been at the expense of learning 
a profession, which is generally allowed to be one that 
is necessary, why should they not live by that profession ? 
But suspecting what your answer will be, rather than 
hear it, I will once more change the subject, trusting 
that your opinions on geology will be less offensive. 

As the surface of this globe does evidently undergo 
great changes, apparently by very slow degrees, most of 



10 DIALOGUE. 

the smaller islands appearing to be only the tops of so 
many mountains, separated by some efficient, but un- 
known cause, from the continents, or greater lands 
adjacent to them, to what are we- to attribute such 
phenomena? — whether to violent concussions of nature, 
to earthquakes and subterraneous fires, &c, or to time, 
and the slow action of the elements ? 

Strato. — Although no portion of matter can be anni- 
hilated, it is subject to continual change of form, from 
its own inherent, or self-existing operations ; thus, that 
part of our globe which we call land, is everlastingly 
acted upon by that portion of its surface which we call 
sea, or water, of which element there is a certain 
quantity on, or belonging to our globe : and this parti- 
cular quantity cannot, by any power whatsoever, be 
either added to, or diminished. This portion of matter 
then, of which the sea is the grand reservoir, is un- 
ceasingly in motion, and by a slow, but sure process, 
in co-operation with the elements of air and fire, is 
continually reducing into a loose, or fluid state, those 
particles which it had, perhaps millions of years pre- 
viously, laid as loose sediment, and which, after being 
raised by accumulation to such a height as to be, in the 
ordinary routine of alternation, left by the sea, became 
solid rock, from the action of the atmosphere, perhaps 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 11 

owing to the consolidating power of some unknown 
ingredients thereof. Thus the perpetual action of the 
element of water, together with the aid of other 
physical powers, is unceasingly reducing, or unmaking 
the land formed of old, in the manner as aforesaid (for 
it is a demonstrable fact that all high land is necessarily 
in a state of diminution), and forming other lands that 
will again be reduced in endless succession ; motion 
being essential to matter, and one of the properties of 
its self-existence, of which it cannot divest itself. For 
a solution of your doubt, therefore, I see no necessity 
for having recourse to what are called convulsions of 
nature, to which the geological changes that have taken 
place on the surface of the globe, have been ignorantly 
attributed, for they never do materially change the face 
of countries, their effects being always sudden, partial, 
and by no means lasting.* 

* The universe admitteth neither generation nor corruption, for 
it ever was, and ever shall be ; if any man should conceive it to 
have been made, he would not be able to know from what material 
it was made, or into what it should be corrupted and dissolved, — 
so that the universe is without beginning or ending : but always 
remaineth in the same condition it is now in, equal and like itself: 
the evident signs whereof, are the orders, fit proportions, figures, 
situations, intervals, faculties, mutual swiftness and slowness of 
essential motions, numbers and periods of time ; all things admitting 
of alteration according to progress. Now I call universal matter 



12 DIALOGUE. 

Mod. — If the great changes that take place in that 
part of the globe which is land, are caused in the way 
you state, we must suppose a prodigious length of time as 

by the name of universe, which appellation it obtaineth in that it 
comprehendeth all things, being an absolute and perfect collection 
of all natures, and besides the universe there is nothing, for all is 
contained in it, either as a part, or excrescence, and therefore it 
stands in need of nothing besides itself, being eternal, perfect, and 
permanent for ever. If we suppose the universe to be dissolved, 
it must of necessity be dissolved into something, or into nothing, — 
not into something, inasmuch as there would not in that case be a 
total annihilation of matter, — not into nothing, for it is impossible 
that something should either be made of nothing, or that any part 
of matter should be annihilated. Wherefore the universe can 
admit neither production nor annihilation ; and there can be nothing 
without, or external to that which comprehends all things, — but 
men and other animals, do in a more inferior manner finish the 
progress of their nature, since they do not return to their first age, 
neither have they a reciprocal change into one another, as it is in fire, 
air, water, and earth ; but after they have passed their several ages, 
they die, and are dissolved, becoming in the same state as they were.* 
These, therefore, are arguments sufficient to prove, that the universe 
remaineth perfect and uncorrupted ; as also that the excrescence 
and results thereof suffer only a mutation, and not an annihilation ; 
there being no such thing as quies in natura, all things being in a 
perpetual circular motion. Nay, that the figure, motion, time, and 
substance thereof, are without beginning or end, and therefore 
infinite. Nor hath man had any original production from the earth, 
or elsewhere, as some believe ; but hath always been, as he now 
is, co-existent with the world, whereof he is a part. — Nature and 
generation govern all things. 

Ocellus Lucanus, on the Universe. 

* " Quo non nati jaccnt," a ■ saith both Seneca and Pliny. 

Note by the Latin Translator. 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 13 

being requisite to bring them round in succession ; indeed 
it is almost beyond human conception the idea of the 
time required in such a slow process as you have sugges- 
ted ; for we find shells and other marine productions on 
the tops of the highest mountains, and according to your 
theory, these mountains must have been covered by the 
sea, otherwise they could not have been formed by its 
deposition or sediment : and by the same theory, these 
mountain tops, so covered, and having these shell-fish 
remains upon them, must have been in a loose, uncon- 
solidated state, like a sand, or shell bank under water, 
until they were gradually raised so high as naturally to 
be above the medium level of the sea, and then hardened 
into solid rock by the action of the more subtile elements. 
Strato. — The great difficulty, as well as the fun- 
damental error in this matter arises, as you state, from 
unfounded and false notions about time, — notions at first 
invented and propagated by the sacerdotal orders of 
former times, and now chiefly supported by their modern 
successors, to suit their own ends; they tell us that, 
something less than six thousand years ago, there was 
no sun, no moon, no stars, no earth, no matter of any 
sort, and even no time itself ; for they make God to say, 
< Before time was, I was.' Now, by this bold invention 
of the priests, the silly multitude of mankind have not 



14 DIALOGUE. 

quite six thousand years allowed them to account for the 

production of the stupendous order of nature which they 

see before them : — and having thus confined within the 

comparative period of a day, the very existence of nature 

herself, our theological rulers have prepared a suitable 

place of torment to receive all such of mankind as dare 

attempt to open their eyes to the light of nature and 

reason : — this place is exactly the Tartarus of antiquity ; 

but to show that they borrow nothing from the ancients, 

they have changed its name, and called it hell.* The true 

philosopher will never find difficulty, or suffer himself to 

be hampered in regard to time, for if a million of years 

are deemed insufficient for the working of such changes, 

he will readily allow an hundred million, or whatever 

lapse of time nature required to work them by her own 

process. 

" Dark flood of time ! 
Roll as it listeth thee — I measure not 
By months or moments thy ambiguous course." 

The quantity of water on our globe not being sufficient 
to immerse its whole surface, part of it, perhaps about 

* " The word Cheol has been translated hell (enfer) although 
it is evident that this word implies merely sepulchre or tomb. They 
have in like manner translated the Hebrew word Topheth, into 
hell ; but, on examining the term closely, we find that it designates 
a place of punishment near Jerusalem, where malefactors were pun- 
ished, and their carcases burned." 



STIIATO AND MODERATUS. 15 

one third thereof, must necessarily in regular alternation, 
remain dry land, but this land must always be by far the 
smallest portion of the globe's surface : and for reasons 
already stated, it is, as it were, moulded by, and sub- 
jected to, this greater, more powerful, and more active 
element of water ; for the slow, but everlasting impres- 
sion that is made by the sea, is aided by rains, rivers, 
and torrents from all the high lands, sweeping down the 
loose and separated particles to the bosom of the sea, 
there again to be desposited in the form of sediment, in 
the formation of new land, which will again become 
solid rock when raised so high as to be acted upon by the 
upper elements: — thus it is chiefly the power and do- 
minion of that quantity of the element of water that is 
upon our globe, acting absolutely and perpetually all 
over the surface thereof, alternately making and unmak- 
ing land, by that unceasing motion which constitutes 
its power, and by which the process is carried on in a 
gradual, and sometimes in an almost imperceptible 
manner.* If it were possible for us to examine the bot- 

* This system of geology is alluded to in the way of allegory, 
in the fable of Proteus, who, according to the poets, was Neptune's 
herdsman, and whose name properly signifies primary, or oldest 
meaning that he represented matter, and the eternal nature thereof; 
his changeableness expresses the endless operations, and new modi- 
fications of matter, principally wrought in a fluid state by the unceas- 



16 DIALOGUE. 

toms of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, their surfaces 
would be found as rugged and mountainous as any of 
the great continents are, and probably we should find 
many mountains elevated to such a height as to approach 
very nearly to the level of the sea, and which will, in 
the course of some thousands of years, emerge above it in 
the appearance of islands, or the mountain tops of future 
continents, now in the progress of being formed by 
the sea. 

Mod. — According to this watery theory of yours, we 
will suppose, for the sake of a case, that the Canary 
Islands are the remaining tops of so many mountains, all 
of which did at some exceedingly remote period, form a 
part of the continent of Africa, and of course that the 
peak of Teneriffe was a huge mountain of that continent ; 
now, I wish to ask you what length of time this for- 
midable agent, the sea, has taken to work its way so as 
to effect so wide a separation between these islands them- 
selves, and between all of them and the main land of 



ing motion^ of the sea, (Neptune) and the other elements : he 
was said to take all kinds of shapes and miraculous forms, as fire, 
water, monstrous animals, &c. denoting that in him was personified 
all the various forms and appearances produced by the perpetual 
action of the elements : he was represented as the servant of Neptune, 
and said to reside in a cave, meaning the vast concavity of the 
heavens. 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 17 

Africa,— I will likewise ask you whether this separation 
took place before or after the flood ? 

Strato. — The peak of Teneriffe cannot be considered 
as any thing else than the top of a vast mountain, which, 
in very remote times did (together with the other 
islands around it ) unquestionably stand in Africa, its 
basis probably still extending near to that continent, of 
which, some half a million of years ago, it must have 
formed a part, until a separation was effected by the 
searching and never sleeping action of the sea. In 
regard to the length of time that might be requisite for 
the sea to wear so wide a channel between these moun- 
tain tops and the main land of Africa, and such consider- 
able channels between each other, I will not deal scru- 
pulously with you, for if five hundred thousand years are 
deemed insufficient for so great a work, you may double 
or triple the amount. In alluding to a flood, I suppose 
you mean the monstrously absurd Jewish one of Noah, 
— a caricature drawn by the Jewish priests or scribes, 
from the fabulous floods of Egyptian and Grecian tradi- 
tions, — -but more on this subject elsewhere. ' The high- 
est delight of theology is the destruction of the beauty, 
order, and harmony of the universe. A world regularly 
existing from all eternity, and continuing so to exist 
through an endless futurity, would be, in the estimation 

c 



18 



DIALOGUE. 



of supernatural theology, an object of disgust. To nour- 
ish the superstitious pride and folly of man, it is neces- 
sary to derange, overturn, and destroy the splendid beau- 
ties, and majestic grandeur of the vast empire of nature/ 
by preternatural floods, or any other mode of des- 
truction. 

Mod. — Whatever may be the apparent inconsistency 
of our despising the Jews as a people, and at the same 
time holding in reverence and adoration their sacred 
writings, we cannot possibly have a doubt of the divine 
origin of their books, impressed as they are, not only 
with the marks of the very highest antiquity, but com- 
mencing with the creation of matter itself; and hence 
it follows that all other nations, even the most ancient of 
the Pagans, must have imitated their religion, customs, 
and traditions, varying all of them, according to times, 
circumstances, and countries. 

Strato. — Just the reverse of all this appears to have 
been the case, as will hereafter be shown on the autho- 
rity of their historian Josephus; and even by their Bible 
accounts, if we admit them ; but the fact is, we can 
hardly depend on the truth of any one statement con- 
tained in their Pentateuch, as they deal in little else than 
the miraculous, or the marvellous, and their stories are 
scarcely ever supported by any corroborating historical 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 19 

testimony. The first thing we learn of them with any 
certainty is, their slavery in Egypt, and herein for once 
their own account agrees with what Tacitus and several 
other authors have said on the subject : as to how and 
when they became slaves there, is not so certain, but 
from all that has been gathered regarding this point, the • 
probability is that, as a wandering horde of the desart, 
they had entered Egypt for plunder, and were there 
made slaves for their robberies, &c. : they still continued 
to observe their own customs and habits ; and as the be- 
getting of children was always a primary object with 
them, they are said to have used every means to attain 
this end, living filthily and incestuously together, until 
they became so formidable, both from their number and 
nastiness, that the Egyptian king determined on expel- 
ling them. The species of leprosy they were subject to 
(all lepers are more libidinous than other people) was 
the scab, or scabies, as it is rendered from Tacitus, which 
caused them to become loathsome to their Egyptian 
masters. After this expulsion or flight from Egypt, 
they tell us one of their absurd fables, namely, that they Irz&t^ 
found themselves able to take the field with six hundred 
thousand men capable of bearing arms. Now this story, 
if true, would only show them to be rank cowards, for, 
except in fabulous history, it cannot be shown that any 



20 DIALOGUE. 

king- of Egypt ever brought into the field the half of 
that number of fighting men ; however, it is certain that 
at the time of this expulsion, or flight, the Greeks, the 
nations of Asia Minor, and all those of the east, were 
great and powerful, while this outcast horde of freeboot- 
ers wandered in the desarts around Mounts Horeb and 
Sinai, having clearly no dialect, except such gibberish of 
their own as they had formed out of the Egyptian lan- 
guage. Leaving this desart, and not knowing where 
they were, being as ignorant of geography as of every 
thing else, they wandered north-east through Idumsea, 
invading the Hebrew countries towards the lake Asphal- 
tites, or, in the words of Tacitus, in the fifth book of his 
history, " encroaching upon the Hebrew countries and 
borders of Syria" Now, mark well that, when Taci- 
tus here speaks of " the Hebrew countries,'' he cannot 
possibly mean any thing else than the Phoenician coun- 
tries, whose language was the ancient Hebrew, which 
had been in existence for many thousands of years be- 
fore a Jew or an Israelite was known or heard of; at 
least this much is incontestibly certain, that as an illite- 
rate caste they could know nothing of the Hebrew while 
they were in Egypt, nor until their invasion of the He- 
brew or Phoenician countries, where, it appears by their 
own account, they were afterwards deservedly overpow- 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 21 

ered by, and made slaves to these Hebrews, whose lan- 
guage they adopted and barbarized to suit themselves ; 
and, agreeably to their usual endeavours to mystify and 
conceal the truth, they called this their bondage, or sla- 
very to the Philistines, in place of Phoenicians. 

Mod. — It appears from the sacred records, that it was 
the Hebrew language in which God himself wrote, or 
dictated to Moses, the tables containing the Decalogue 
and the laws, which were in that language, engraved on 
tables by that legislator, together with all the books of 
the Pentateuch ; and since all this was done by miracle, 
consistency requires ns to believe that the Hebrew was 
already prepared as a language by God himself, and 
communicated to Moses for the express purpose of ful- 
filling his will ; and this being the case, that language 
would very quickly be disseminated not only amongst 
the Jewish people, but also in those countries where they 
settled; this accounts for the Hebrew language being 
afterwards found in use amongst the Phoenicians, and 
establishes the antiquity of the Jews. 

Strato. — You did well in calling in miracles to your 
aid to solve your difficulties, as reason and the common 
course of things would not serve your turn. But are 
you not ashamed of the impious knavery of this 
Egyptian priest Moses, in pretending to be tete-a-tete 



22 DIALOGUE. 

with God Almighty, and charging him with being a 
party to crimes and villanies so derogatory to, and un- 
worthy of the majesty and power of the Supreme 
Being ? The truth is, that since he himself and all his 
followers were born in Egypt, it follows as certain that, 
if he wrote any thing in the desart (laying aside your 
miracles, if you please), it could be only in the Egyptian 
language, because, allowing that he could write in any 
other, it would have been useless to his ignorant people : 
\ but the plain likelihood is, that with the connivance of 
his brother priest Aaron, he could easily deceive the 
rabble with a few hieroglyphics, cut upon blocks of wood 
or stone, and give them whatever interpretation suited 
his own ends. As to the matter of antiquity, their his- 
torian, Josephus, has conceded that point, for in his dis- 
course against Apion, after magnifying his countrymen 
as being the first inhabitants of the earth, confesses that 
he dares not, nevertheless, compare the monuments of 
the Jews with those of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and 
Phoenicians, as the air of those countries, from being 
less subject to corruption, was proper for preserving 
written records ; which is as much as to say, that as no 
other nations but the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Phoeni- 
cians had preserved the old records of their originals, 
he would not contend with them for antiquity, but only 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 23 

witli those who, like his countrymen, had no such re- 
cords to show.* 

Mod. — I have no difficulty in allowing that when the 
Jews quitted Egypt they might have few, or perhaps no 
written records of their own as a people ; but you are 
not disposed to credit what they say in regard to the ex- 
ceeding remote antiquity of that event, or even to admit 
their just pretensions to letters and civilization, when 
they afterwards became a nation. 

Strato. — There are numerous proofs in their own 
books (some of which will be adduced hereafter), suffi- 
cient to convince us that they had no books or writings 
of their own until long after their guilty invasion of the 
Hebrew country; and when, after a time, they had 
formed their dialect out of that language, and committed 
some of their traditions or legends to writing, these 
seem to have been concealed from all but their priests, 
and rulers, at least the neighbouring nations knew 



* Justin Martyr informs us that Moses was the grandson of a 
great magician, who communicated to him all his art. Manethon 
and Chereman, Egyptian historians, respecting whom testimonies 
have been transmitted by Joseph the Jew, state that a multitude of 
lepers were driven out of Egypt, and that these exiles elected for 
their leader a priest of Heliopolis, whose name was Moses, who 
formed for them a religion, and a code of laws. — Josephus against 
Apion. 



24 DIALOGUE. 

nothing whatever of their writings, until the second 
Ptolemy of Egypt (to whom the Jews were then sub- 
ject) demanded their assistance in making a translation 
of their secret books from the Hebrew into Greek, 
which was done accordingly at Alexandria, but in a 
manner so untoward and against the grain, and with such 
studied deception, that all the learned Jews of after 
times, and many learned Christians have declared that 
this Septuagint translation, which is our Bible, is the 
most faithless version that ever was made of any book 
whatsoever ; # and that such was the result is no way 
surprising, as the eastern Jews of Judaea looked upon it 
as a sad national calamity, perhaps more grievous and 
intolerable than any one of their many captivities, to be 
required to disclose the mysteries of that pretended 
theocracy which their crafty priests and rulers had taught 
the ignorant to believe in, as being sacred and heaven- 
descended. It is therefore not wonderful that the Jews, 
thus tasked by an authority which they dared not to re- 
sist, should deviate as widely from the original as the 
nature of the task would allow. The learned Jew Philo, 

* St Jerome himself bears testimony of this, who, being engaged 
in the revisal and correction of the Latin or Vulgate version of the 
Bible, assures us that for explication he had recourse to the Greek 
version, and that he found those copies as defective, and as much 
altered by the transcribers as those of the Latin. 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 25 

confesses that before the Septuagint translation, the 
Jewish writings were utterly* unknown to other nations ; 
and, as this authority is undeniable, how was it possible 
for those nations to borrow from the Hebrew books, 
which were not only kept out of sight and unknown, but 
of a very recent origin compared with the allegorical 
traditions and histories of the Egyptians, Greeks, Phoe- 
nicians, and all the nations of the east ? 

Mod. — When you deny the great antiquity of the 
Jews, and will not allow that they were either the 
most ancient people on earth, or the most in favour 
with the Supreme Being, can you account for the 
silence throughout the Bible with respect to the pyra- 
mids, in any other way than that they had not been 
erected at the time when the Israelites were in captivity 
in Egypt ? If this is admitted as a fact, it will alone 
establish a very high antiquity for the Jews, since Hero- 
dotus tells us that when he travelled in that country 
about two thousand three hundred years ago, he heard 
various accounts of their origin, most of which appeared 
to be fabulous ; and his account is corroborated by Dio- 
dorus Siculus. It is also remarkable that, although the 
latter of these historians (and I believe the former also) 
enumerates long successions of the ancient kings of 
Egypt, for some thousands of years before their times, 



26 DIALOGUE. 

tliey no where, that I remember, mention the name 
of Pharaoh, which leads me to suppose that this scrip- 
ture name must have been a designation common 
to a race of Egyptian kings, who reigned anterior to the 
times of the two Sesostris, Busiris, or even that of 
Menis. 

Strato. — Notwithstanding the evident endeavours of 
the Jews to keep their origin out of sight, there is some 
historical evidence, besides the proofs contained in their 
own books, all of which are opposed not less to the 
respectability, than they are to the great antiquity of 
their origin. The first translator of Tacitus into English, 
either out of compliment to the Jews, or to the church, 
either omitted, or stopped short at the account which 
that historian gives of that people; and subsequent 
translators have not rendered him fairly, inasmuch as 
Tacitus says that, " as an ignorant people, they assented 
to put themselves under the conduct of Moses." And 
again, that by whatsoever means their customs and 
observances had been introduced, " they have no anti- 
quity for their patronization" 

From the many proofs that may be quoted against the 
antiquity of the books attributed to Moses, I shall here 
for the present give only one, which is of itself beyond 
all contradiction destructive of any such pretensions. 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 27 

In Genesis, chap. 36, verse 31, it is said, " And these 
are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before 
the children of Israel had any king ;" which shows 
clearly that this first book of the Pentateuch could not 
possibly have been written until after the reign of 
several kings of Israel, and therefore it is only a fair 
inference to conclude, when backed by so much concur- 
rent testimony, that it was not written until after the 
Babylonish captivity, and the restoration of part of them 
to Jerusalem by Cyrus, who gave them leave to rebuild 
their temple on their paying him a large sum of money 
("for many of them had grown rich at Babylon by their 
usual trade in old clothes and money clipping") ; so with 
this encouragement many of them returned to Judea. 
After this period their high priests or pontiffs were com- 
monly their rulers, and from this arose their division 
into opposing sects, the never-failing consequence of 
theological dominion; but having now the advantage 
of adding some Chaldean to their Phoenician lore, their 
scribes began to arrange their traditions for the short 
time they had been a nation, intermixing therewith the 
ancient fables of those countries where they had been in 
slavery. But first of all it was necessary to forge for 
themselves a more respectable origin than the true one ; 
so they adopted the name of Ibraham, or Ibrahim, as 



28 DIALOGUE. 

the name of the imaginary personage who was to be the 
common stock or root of the chosen people. This name 
is famous in Arabia and other eastern countries, and 
signifies, in the Arabic and Chaldean languages, " the 
father of a people." The adoption of this name was 
crafty and ingenious on the part of the compiler, but his 
changing it into Abraham was a poor and petty disguise, 
for the names are precisely the same. In order to raise 
scions from this stock, Abraham is dispatched into 
Egypt,* with Sarah his wife, whom, as the story goes, he 
turned to excellent good account in using as the means 
to secure both wealth and progeny. This is the plan 
devised for the purpose of accounting for, and giving a 
respectable origin to this singular people, fabricated and 
put together after their return from Babylon, in or 
about the time of Ezra and Hilkiah, who are supposed 
by some of the learned to have been the compilers, and 

* " The book of Genesis tells us that Abraham departed from 
Haran, after the death of his father, at the age of seventy-five 
years. But in the same book of Genesis, we are told that Terah, 
his father, begat him, when seventy years old, and lived to the age 
of two hundred and five years ; so that Abraham must have quitted 
Chaldea at the age of a hundred and thirty-five years ; and it cer- 
tainly seems strange, that at that age he should abandon the fertile 
plains of Mesopotamia for the far distant and stony country of 
Sichem." From Sichem they represent him as going to Memphis, 
to buy corn a distance of six hundred miles ! ! 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 29 

others are of opinion that the whole mass was fitted up, 
and arranged in the order we now see it, under the 
superintendence of Esdras, and other scribes of the day. 
Now, as it was six hundred years between the time 
when the king of Assyria carried all the twelve tribes in 
bondage to the countries east of the Euphrates, and the 
time when the two and a half tribes were restored by 
Cyrus ; if we add to this the time spent in their other 
slaveries, together with their chronology while they 
were a nation, under their judges and kings, we shall 
find a period of not less than nine hundred years (per- 
haps it was much more) between the time in which it is 
said Moses lived, and the restoration of the two and a 
half tribes to Jerusalem by Cyrus. Thus, the Penta- 
teuch was not composed until at least nine hundred 
years after the time of Moses. 

Mod. — A great deal of what you have said seems to 
rest on probability, or presumptive evidence only, which 
is not sufficient in a matter of such importance. You 
have no authority that I know of for alleging that the 
Jews sprung from a horde of banditti, who had been 
made slaves in Egypt for their robberies, and were 
thence expelled afterwards for similar crimes ; yet if all 
this had even been true, they might still become the 
chosen people of God ; and it is not for us to judge of 



30 DIALOGUE. 

this predilection. As you have said nothing in reply to 
what I suggested respecting the pyramids, and the race 
of Egyptian kings bearing the name of Pharaoh, I sup- 
pose you mean not to notice my observation. 

Strato. — Enough has already been said to show that 
the Jews, but more especially their books, can have no 
just pretensions to a remote antiquity, and I have 
farther proof to offer in support of what has been ad- 
vanced respecting their origin. As for their being the 
chosen and most favoured people of God, their own con- 
fessed crimes and horrible narrations, their barbarous 
cruelty and ignorance, and the contempt and detestation 
in which they were held by all the nations where they 
i were known, sufficiently testify against them. # Their 
constant efforts to overcloud and disguise everything 
relating to themselves, by change of names and varia- 
tion of events, has been so far effectual, that it is diffi- 
cult to reconcile the greater part of their writings with 
any other historical testimony, and no person will deny 
that they are often at variance with their own state- 
ments, forgetting the old adage, that a certain descrip- 
tion of people require good memories. But if we take 

* Josephus informs us that the surrounding nations considered 
the Jews " the most stupid of barbarians, and that they had never 
invented anything useful to man." — Joseph. Con. Apion. 



STKATO AND MODEUATUS. 31 

a look into Diodorus Siculus, we shall find what is very 
satisfactory, as what he relates to the following purport is 
perfectly applicable to the primitive Jews, being consistent 
with what Tacitus and others have written, as well as 
with their own accounts. He informs us that long after 
the death of the two Sesostrises, Actisanes, an Ethiopian 
prince, invaded and conquered Egypt ; that at the time 
of this conquest the country was infested by bands of 
robbers, who were probably some of the wandering 
hordes of the desarts ; and King Actisanes being deter- 
mined to get rid of all such vermin, collected together 
all such of them as had upon trial been convicted of the 
crimes laid to their charge, cut off all their noses (some 
say their ears also), and banished them into that desart 
which is between Egypt and Syria, at the north-east 
extremities of the Red Sea ; here they were in great 
danger of perishing from the want of water, there being 
very little except salt or brackish ponds around them. 
In this predicament, however, they contrived to live for 
some considerable time, by subsisting on quails, which 
they caught in great abundance from the immense flocks 
in which these birds make their passage, and this was 
done by entangling the birds in long nets made with 
reeds. As a horde of freebooters they now, by their 
own account, journeyed towards the north-east, taking 



32 DIALOGUE. 

forcible possession of lands belonging to the Phoenicians, 
whom, for reasons already stated, they called Philistines, 
and, for the same reason, they have concealed the real 
name of the Egyptian king who held them in slavery, 
under the fictitious name of Pharaoh,* — a name which, 
if I am not much mistaken, is not acknowledged either 
in the fabulous or the authentic history of the kings of 
Egypt, although the Jewish books seem to speak of 
many of that name. But whoever amongst their scribes 
might be the compilers of their traditions or legends, 
they had good reasons for keeping the truth in the back 
ground, for if the real name of the king who expelled 
them, or permitted them to go, had been given, the time 
of their departure from Egypt, and the true cause 
thereof, would have been known by history, which would 
at once have destroyed both their credit and their pre- 
tensions to antiquity; for the same reasons, perhaps, 
they have nowhere, that I can find, mentioned the 
Pyramids, and as there is no consent or agreement 



* It would appear from Lucan, that the word Pharius was often 
used to express any thing Egyptian, and therefore it is more than 
probable that the angry Jews gave the appellative of Pharaoh to 
their master, because he was Egypt's king, rather than as being the 
proper name of the man. It is true that Josephus mentions the 
name of Pharaon as being an appellative common to the male line 
of Egyptian princes. 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 33 

amongst historians, or other authors, respecting the times 
when they were built, or of the king or kings who 
erected any, one of them, but all is enveloped in fable : 
the fact seems to be, that Jiey were erected long before 
the time of this king Actisanes. Another of the kings 
of Egypt, whose name was Nileus, so far excelled all his 
predecessors in improving the advantages derived from 
the great river, that, after his death, his name (Nile) 
was, by common consent, given to the river, which pre- 
viously had been called by different names, viz. Eagle, 
Oceanus, Egyptus, &c. Now, at the time when the 
Jewish books were compiled, the river was known by its 
modern name of Nile, and lest this fact should betray 
the recent origin of these pretenders to antiquity, they 
seem studiously to have avoided the name of Nile, giv- 
ing it the general term of river, or the river of Egypt, 
wiiile the Euphrates, Jordan, &c. go by their proper 
names. In the 39th chapter of Ezekiei, the writer 
speaks of some one of the conquests of Egypt (which 
had no doubt already taken place), and in verse 14th he 
says, " I will make Pathros desolate." For the sake of 
information, I ask any divine, or commentator, to tell 
me what or where this Pathros was, and whether the 
compiler does not, by the poor disguise of transposing a 
few of the letters, allude to the famous light tower of 

D 



34 



DIALOGUE. 



Pharos, which was accounted one of the wonders of the 
world, and was built by two of the Ptolemies, after the 
time of Alexander? So much for the antiquity of Eze- 
kiel. In short, when all that we can gather from ancient 
history regarding this people, is compared with the very 
little that is rational and intelligible in their own ac- 
counts, it amounts almost to a certainty that Diodorus 
has direct allusion to the expulsion of the Jews from 
Egypt, for they themselves declare that they wandered 
in this very desert for a great length of time, confirming 
almost every circumstance and occurrence (except the 
rape of the noses and ears), as related by Diodorus. 
After the battle of Issus, when Alexander conquered 
Syria and Phoenicia, the same historian mentions nothing 
at all of the Jews as an independent nation, and there- 
fore they must have been conquered by, and then in 
slavery to the Phoenicians, who had them in bondage 
three different times. 

Mod. — You have said, in such terms as cannot be 
mistaken, that the Jews were nothing more than rude 
copyists, clumsy and barbarous imitators in the different 
countries where they were so frequently in slavery ; but 
unless you produce facts to warrant such alarming 
charges, I shall continue to believe that you judge 
through prejudice, or at least too hastily, owing to some 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 35 

apparent inconsistencies which are observable in their 
books. 

Strato. — No one will deny that it is quite in the 
nature and reason of things, that a people who were 
always extremely barbarous, more frequently in slavery 
than free, and, by their own confession, perpetually pick- 
ing up the usages and superstitions of the nations which 
so held them in slavery, should imitate the customs of 
their masters, rather than be taken as an example by 
them. I have already noticed the ridiculous caricature 
which they have made of Ogyges,' or Deucalion's flood, 
and there is no difficulty in showing, by their own books, 
that the whole of their theology was taken from the 
mythological fables of paganism, particularly those of 
the Egyptians, fitted up and disguised by the priests, to 
impose upon the ignorance of the people ; but the first 
and particular consideration was, to suit every thing to 
their own interest. In like manner the theocracy of the 
Jews, or their government by God, was made up of 
shreds and patches of oriental fable, absurdly strung- 
together in a fantastical way, corresponding to their 
own rude notions of things, — 

" An inhuman and uncultured race, who 
Howl'd hideous praises to their 'jealous God.' ** 

Mod. — Let us for the present, however, so pass by 



36 DIALOGUE. 

these things as to leave them with a retrospect at conve- 
nience ; and here I shall only observe that I can by no 
means agree in your contemptuous endeavour to make it 
appear, that the Jews have never been any thing better 
than the vagabond old clothesmen of the world, except 
during the very short time they held, as a nation, a small 
corner of Coelo-Syria, and which, you say, they wrested 
by force from the right and proper owners ; but herein I 
am bound to differ from you so much, that I request 
leave again to change the subject. You will readily al- 
low, I presume, that this globe which we inhabit is only 
a single speck, or atom, in comparison with what we see 
around us, and as all these immense bodies of dense mat- 
ter, discoverable from this earth, and at distances so pro- 
digious as to be beyond the mind's conception, appear to 
be governed in the most consummate order and harmony, 
we cannot avoid acknowledging that there is an Omnipo- 
tent Being who directs and governs the whole order of 
the universe. 

Strato. — That there is such a POWER, no man 
can reasonably deny ; but still I must affirm that no man 
who is free from prejudice, and capable of using his rea- 
soning faculties fairly and impartially, will ever pretend 
to know any thing more of that POWER, than the very 
little that he sees and understands of the works, or the 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 37 

common process of nature, which is daily before his 
eyes. Let the silly and contemptible pride of man im- 
piously personify it in his own, or any other earthly like- 
ness he pleases, — let him ascribe to it his own miserable 
passions, — let him charge it with having written, or dic- 
tated books of a sh amefu lly immoral tendency, * and in 
a tyrannical manner, regarding the great mass of man- 
kind, and partially to benefit a handful of the most des- 
picable banditti, and such like ridiculous fooleries. But 
deluded man, with all his sottish forms, his idle puppet- 
show ceremonies, and with all his pretensions to heavenly 
inspirations, never can know any thing of that All- 
Ruling Power, farther than he sees it set forth and ex- 
ercised in the works of nature. This is the boundary of 
his very limited perceptions, and when free and unbiased, 
the utmost point his faculties can arrive at is, a i^ational 
conviction that this Omnipotent Power is not distinct, or 



* We are required to believe that from the All-ruling Power pro- 
ceeded such immoral and malevolent desires and sentiments as the 
following : — " Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow; 
let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg ; let them also 
seek their bread out of their desolate places j let the extortioner 
catch all that he hath, and let the stranger spoil his labour ; let 
there be none to extend mercy to him, neither let there be any to 
favour his fatherless children ; let his posterity be cut off, and in the 
generation^following let their name be blotted out ! ! " Here is a 
specimen of Bible morality. 



38 DIALOGUE. 

separable from, or external to, nature herself; * and that 
the innumerable bodies of apparently solid matter that 
revolve in the endless plenum (for all is matter in some 
form or other), are regulated by the natural and self-ex- 
istent properties of matter and motion; and in the 
mutual relation which all bodies, composing the different 
systems, have to their common centre, or sun, and to 
each other by the powers of attraction and repulsion : 
these systems appear to be in nothing different from the 
Cartesian Vortices. Most of the globes which we be- 
hold may consist of matter similar to that of this earth, 
and like all matter existing of itself, and therefore eter- 
nal, subject to change of form alone, which change of 
form is the necessary consequence of motion, one of its 
essential properties.-)* 

Mod. — Men are so much accustomed to the construc- 
tion of all artificial objects, that it seems to them anala- 



* Amongst the initiated in the mysteries of antiquity, the term 
God was used only as a name expressive of an effect, whose cause 
is nature. 

f " We may conclude boldly, then, that there is only one sub- 
stance, differently modified, in the whole universe." This is not an 
hypothesis raised on the strength of things required, or of things 
merely supposed to be true, nor of my own reason alone ; but ex- 
perience has spoken to me in confirmation of what reason continu- 
ally points out; and thus I have joined them together, as the torch 
which leads us in the path of nature. 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 39 

gous to suppose that matter itself must have been pro- 
duced, or created, by an infinite power, and this power 
being- itself immaterial, stood in no need of materials to 
work with, as it created every thing out of itself, thai is, 
out of nothing. 

Strato. — It is just this superficial mode of drawing 
inference from the works of man, that gives rise to the 
idea of the creation of matter, because he cannot distin- 
guish between nature and a clock-maker ; for it is the 
invariable propensity of men to prefer the prodigy and 
the miracle, to that which is naturally easy and reasonable ; 
and they either cannot, or will not, perceive the thou- 
sand-fold difficulty of supposing a time when matter did 
not exist, and that it was created out of nothing, to this 
plain, simple, and rational proposition, that it did always 
exist in and of itself The word creation, in its common 
acceptation, has therefore no proper meaning, nor does 
it admit of any fixed definition, except when applied to 
the creation of new forms, from pre-existing forms of 
matter. We see nature, or if you will have it so, God, 
in every thing ; and St Thomas tells us that, " he is 
nature, and the agent." This All-Ruling Power, then, 
call it God, or nature, or by any other name you please, 
(for names are truly nothing except in as far as they 
serve to convey clear ideas, and that which is alone all 



40 LOG UE. 

n all, needs no name, for. there is nothing with which it 
can be confounded), must be in all places where there is 
existence ; and is by, and of itself, every thing that ex- 
ists, filling every thing, and leaving no space for any 
other substance : therefore, every thing that presents 
itself to the senses, or of which the mind can possibly 
form any conception, being material, or matter in some 
form or other, it follows that every existing thing is 
comprehended in this unbounded and Almighty material 
power, which has been called, or designated by thousands 
of different names, in the thousands of artificial, and ever 
fluctuating religions that have distracted the world. 

Mod. — I imagine, as you have stated, that no distinct 
and rational conception can be formed in the mind, of 
any thing that is not material; and even allowing the 
absurdity of supposing that the mind can form any idea 
of a thing that is essentially nothing, still it does not 
necessarily follow that matter is self-existent, self-ruled 
and modified; for all appearances in nature seem to 
warrant, and even to force us to the conclusion, that so 
much harmony and order cannot exist without the direc- 
tion of some infinite power or being, which exists not 
only independently of nature or matter, but having these 
principles dependent upon itself; and this power, or 
being, we call God. 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 41 

Strato. — If you admit that nature is the principle, 
there is no room left for supposing any other existence ; 
for if matter and its nature be the principle, as such, it 
can have no cause, no antecedent, and must therefore be 
self-existent and eternal. But this does not suit with 
your favourite theory of a being which you are taught 
to believe exists externally to, or beyond, the bounds of 
nature and of matter, which is altogether boundless"; 
and this creature of your imagination, you figure in your 
mind to be something that is essentially nothing ; and as 
names with you take precedence of ideas, you are pleased 
to describe this being of yours as an immaterial sub- 
stance, which substance, you say again, is spiritual, and 
although spiritual and immaterial, yet possessing the 
form or likeness of a man ! ! An astonishing piece of 
impious arrogance, in which it is hard to say whether the 
pride or the folly of man is uppermost^ In regard to 

* Since nothing is more impossible than for human conception to 
take such a mighty flight as to equal, much less can it pass beyond 
the first principles of things : that is, the self-existence, and self- 
ruled motions of matter. 

f Zenophanes observed, that if the ox or the elephant understood 
sculpture or painting, they would not fail to represent the Deity 
under their own peculiar figure. In this they would have as much 
reason as Polycletus, or Phidias, who gave him the human form. 

" And 'twere an innocent dream, but that a faith 
Nurs'd by fear's dew of poison, grows thereon." 



42 DIALOGUE. 

the inherent powers and energies which govern matter, 
all that man has yet discovered respecting them, are cer- 
tain qualities, or properties which he has called by the 
names of gravitation, repulsion, attraction, motion, &c. 
and there are probably thousands 01 other qualities be- 
longing to matter, which are beyond tfte powers of the 
human mind to discover ; all constituting those immutable 
laws of nature, or matter, and of which it cannot be 
divested, not even by its own powers. And in all this 
there is nothing more surprising than there is in water 
running downwards, when left to itself, a property 
of which no power whatever can divest it. Thus, 
matter acting by its own laws, is the principle of prin- 
ciples. 

Mod. — You seem to have a particular aversion to the 
commonly-received notion that, God made man in his 
own image or likeness, a fable which, you say, was in- 
vented by the priests, in times of ignorance ; and in a 
cynical sneering way, you have elsewhere said that man 
hag returned the compliment by making his God in 
human likeness ; but this idea, even if erroneous, appears 
to be perfectly harmless; and if the pride of man has pre- 
sumed a little too far in this particular, you are still com- 
pelled to allow that he is an animal far superior to any 
other on the globe, and as he rules all others, he must 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 43 

have a natural right over them ; and if so, they must 
have been made for his use and subsistence. 

Strato. — "This is as much as to say that, as noses 
wear spectacles, therefore noses were made for specta- 
cles." The seliish and contemptible notion that the 
Omnipotent Power, which rules every thing, made man 
in its own form or likeness, had its origin, no doubt, 
amongst those whose interest it always is to mislead the 
multitude, (the personifying of Deities being common in 
the remotest antiquity) by buoying up the false pride 
and folly of men, between whom, and their three Deities, 
they have constituted themselves as the legal and autho- 
rized mediators. Man differs from the other animals in 
the structure of his body, and is superior to them only 
in some qualities, which are greatly improved in educa- 
tion by the experience and combination of society, as 
may be proved beyond contradiction, by comparing him 
as the educated production of society, with what he is 
in the wild, or natural state; for in the latter condition he is 
so far from being superior, or formidable, that lie hardly 
holds a middle rank with the larger animals, many of 
whom look upon him as destined by nature for their sub- 
sistence, and use him accordingly ; and by the same rule 
of right that guides man in such cases, viz. having the 
art, or the force to subdue their prey. 



44 DIALOGUE. 

Mod. — To sav nothing- of what we call a divine right 
in man to the other animals, his superiority over them is 
proved, in as much as no other is capable of reasoning 
or speech ; of calling assemblies, and holding consulta- 
tion for promoting the common good of society; of 
making written laws for the government of countries, 
and, under the protection of these laws, to build cities 
for national convenience and safety. 

Stuato. — In society man has now before him the 
written learning and experience of his species for more 
than two thousand years, to which 3 if we add his natural 
ingenuity and subtility, arising from his large proportion 
of brain, we will not be at all surprised at his having 
subdued so many of the other animals to his own use and 
service : but in doing all this by dint of combination in 
society, has he truly improved his condition for the short 
term of life which nature has allotted for him ? Are not 
the evils which spring from the present distorted condi- 
tion of society, greater than its advantages ? After sub- 
duing the other animals, has not man left himself, 
his own species to contend against, corrupted as they 
are by false and ridiculous systems of religion, by unna- 
tural and iniquitous laws which, in a great measure, 
spring from those sources, and by a general hypocrisy 
and falseness of character, which pervades society from the 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 45 

highest to the lowest ? — Under sucli deplorable circum- 
stances, let any man of candour and observation lay his 
hand upon his heart, and honestly declare whether his 
fellow men, and even those he calls his friends, are not 
the cause and prime source of all his inquietudes and 
miseries, — whether man is not the animal that he is 
obliged to be more continually on his guard against than 
any other ! These melancholy evils arise, not from any 
thing innately vicious in his nature, but from the accu- 
mulated mass of absurdity, error, and falsehood that has 
overwhelmed society, and to which I have already ad- 
verted ; but it may be farther observed here, that all this 
perverse degeneracy is chiefly to be attributed to a 
general apostacy from nature and in place of her plain 
and wholesome laws, men have substituted the arts of 
insincerity and fraud, with institutions, manners, customs, 
&c. the most pernicious to human happiness. In proof 
of this perversion of nature, take as a single instance for 
the present, the baleful effects of the laws relating to 
monogamy, or single marriage, so pregnant with mis- 
chief and misery to nine-tenths of mankind who unhap- 
pily bind themselves by them ; — love constitutes the 
chief happiness of all animals except man, to him alone 
it brings misery, owing to this atrocious law, now be- 
come still more intolerable since the ministration thereof 



46 DIALOGUE. 

has been usurped by the church, where the priest, by a 
few conjoining syllables takes upon him to unite amicably 
together, dispositions of the most discordant nature, the 
union of which may turn out to be as fire with water; 
and that too by a bond which cannot be cancelled but in 
death : but although the priest may thus violate nature, 
he cannot extinguish her : his two persons turned into 
one, soon find that they not only continue to be two 
still, but that they are at all points opposed to each 
other ; and then follows a scene of clouds and tempests, 
where there is no haven of peace, and therefore ship- 
wreck or ransomless captivity is the inevitable doom. 
The only thing that could ever render monogamy at all 
bearable, would be the liberty of divorce to the fullest 
extent, at the instance of either party, but without that 
remedy the intention of nature is thwarted doubly, and 
the obligatory tie is a cruel and unnatural imposition, 
standing as it does in full opposition to those free and 
voluntary means which nature intended as the means of 
procreation. This glaring fact daily presents itself be- 
fore us, — that, the horror of such unnatural trammels con- 
demns nearly the half of the female sex to that pining, 
cheerless state of celibacy, that is far more than any 
thing else, abhorrent to nature: — in youth men will 
be blinded by the animal passion of love, which is com- 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 47 

monly too strong for headlong inexperience ; but in riper 
years, people of sense and observation, who value their 
liberty, will not readily be induced to commit themselves 
so egregiously for life, well knowing that such a yoke, 
under such conditions, is in the highest degree repug- 
nant to nature, which teaches us that, if galling fetters 
so contrary to will and conscience, cannot be removed 
or rectified by law, they should be eluded by preven- 
tion. " If law forbids the cancelling of cruel bonds, 
nature directs us not to sign and seal them:" and, 

" Since many are so bad, 'tis wisdon* to beware, 
And better shun the bait than struggle in the snare." 

It is remarkgJble that man should be the only animal on the 
earth that has had the folly to bind himself through life 
by shackles so inimical to, and subversive of his natural 
liberty, — all the others reason better in marrying during 
the season of love only, and the offspring is in little 
danger, save from the rapaciousness of man. In short, 
4 marriage almost always represents nothing more than 
the picture of two unfortunate human beings, who are 
chained together, to be a reciprocal torment to each 
other/ 

Mod. — You seem to despise a beaten tract; and if it be 
truth that you are really in search of, you seek it only in 



48 DIALOGUE. 

bye-patlis wliicli lead you to strange conclusions ; and 
although you draw your premises from nature, many of 
them still appear questionable, at least so they will 
appear if tried by commonly -received creeds, usages, 
and customs ; so they will not bear you out in arraigning 
the religion and other institutions of your country, or in 
your attempts to show that, by disregarding the obvious 
principles of nature, man has become a mere artificial 
animal in society, the patch-work of dissimulation and 
superstition: — but these attacks are ill judged, and will 
certainly gain you no credit, for even if the whole of 
what you allege was strictly true, yet men neither can 
nor ought to bear to be told such truths, because every 
endeavour to lower or vilify an established order of 
things, whether that be in itself good or bad, serves more 
or less to unhinge society. And you know little of 
human nature, if you suppose yourself able to convince a 
majority of the people you live amongst, that man is not 
the most favoured creature of the Supreme Being, who 
has bestowed upon him such excellent qualities of mind 
and body, as show indisputably his vast superiority over 
the brute creation. 

Strato.— I have no wish to deprive you of any of 
your consolations, whatever may be their foundation. 
Animal life is merely a portion of matter organized in a 



ST11AT0 AND MODERATUS. 49 

certain manner by a hidden process of nature, and of this 
organization, thought and action are the necessary 
consequence ;* and that which the ancients simply 
called the breath of life, and we call soul, is the same in 
all animals, and may, not without reason, be said to be 
immortal, since it certainly forms part of, and belongs to 
that elementary matter which we call air, and must 
therefore be eternal. Those qualities which go by the 

* "Let us view man when within the shell, and when out of it: 
let us take a microscope and examine the youngest embryos, those 
of the growth of four, six, eight, or fifteen days ; after this age we 
may discover them with our naked eyes. Then we can perceive 
the head only, a round egg with two blackish specks, which repre- 
sent the eyes. Before this time, all being unformed, we can see 
nothing but a pulp of marrow, which is the brain, where the original 
of the nerves is first formed, where the principle of feeling is first 
seated, and the heart, which begins already to beat in this soft 
pulp : this is the punctum saliens of Malpighi, part of the liveliness 
of which does perhaps already proceed from the influence of the 
nerves. Then we see the head by degrees stretch forth the neck, 
which being widened, first forms the thorax, where the heart im- 
mediately descends, and takes up its situation. The belly is framed 
next, which is divided into two parts by a partition, called by 
anatomists the diaphragm. These parts being expanded, furnish 
the arms, the hands, the fingers, the nails, and the hair ; the other 
gives the thighs, the legs, the feet, &c, with the known difference 
only of situation, which forms the support and balance of the body. 
It is a surprising vegetation, but not more surprising in man than in 
any other animal. Here you see the hairs that cover the tops of 
our heads, and there you behold the leaves and flowers ; the same 
luxury of nature shines throughout." 



50 DIALOGUE. 

names of mind and reason, in man, exist to a certain 
degree in all animals, and are even much more perfect 
in some of them than they are in man ; but his excessive 
pride, and love of dominion, prevents his seeing and 
acknowledging this truth, while he arrogantly contemns 
all the other creatures ; and his interested teachers have 
found out another name to express precisely that quality 
which we call reason in man, and this name is 
instinct ; a term which, forsooth, we must never fail 
to apply, when speaking of the mental faculties of those 
animals we call brutes, lest they should too nearly 
approach the dignity of the " lords of the creation ;" and 
herein they are right, for reason and all experience at 
once confess the truth, that the sole difference is in the 
distinction of terms. To deny mind and reason to the 
dog, the bee, the ant, and hundreds of others, is as 
absurd and false as it would be to deny that the eagle 
had wings.* To judge of rationalty and irrational ty from 
apprehending, or not apprehending, the meaning of vocal 
sounds, or from silence, or speech not understood, shows 
a shallowness of judgment truly deserving"of our con- 

* When two rams retire backwards to a distance from each other, 
in order to make their blow the stronger, do they not reason as 
correctly as if they had known from mechanical art, that their 
strength is the product of their weight multiplied by their velocity ? 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 51 

tempt. You say that brutes have no walled cities, no 
written laws; I answer, neither had men, while they 
were happy, and had not become victims of that society 
which is now monstrously unnatural, with all its train of 
follies and superstitions. If pride and prejudice would 
allow, man would see clearly that many of the animals 
even far surpass him in those reasoning powers of the 
mind that serve as guides towards preservation and 
health ; for all the grazing classes have a perfect know- 
ledge of the herbage that is deleterious to them, by the 
smell alone ; but to avoid what is injurious, man requires 
generally to unite smell, taste, and experience, to guide 
him in safety : many of the domestic animals have a fore- 
knowledge that amounts to certainty, of approaching 
atmospherical changes, impending storms, &c, for we 
see that they provide against them, and are never de- 
ceived. These instances show what may be called a 
utility of mind, or a degree of useful wisdom that leaves 
man at a distance ; and many others might be quoted of 
the wonderful foresight, providence, and reasoning* 
powers of those we call the brute creation. 

* That defect which hinders vocal communication between man 
and the other animals, why may it not be in him, as well as in 
them ? for we understand them no more than they do us : and by 
the same rule and reason they may therefore despise our ignorance, 



52 DIALOGUE. 

Mod. — The true meaning and tendency of your argu- 
ment is, to establish the fact that the dominion of man 
over the other animals, is wholly and exclusively owing 
to the following causes, viz. — the learning and experi- 
ence of his species, handed down to him, generation after 
generation, for more than two thousand years ; his com- 
bination in society against the other animals ; and the 
cunning and dexterity which his ample allowance of 
brain naturally gives him. But, granting that he has 
benefited by the writings of antiquity, and those of his 
forefathers, still those writings are the effects of the 
ingenuity of man, and cannot have any other origin, 
however far back you may trace them ; and it follows 
that each succeeding generation have a right to avail 
themselves of the advantages handed down to them by 
their ancestors. 

Strato. — That the orang-outang and others of the 
greater monkies have never yet written testaments, 
creeds, and foolish catechisms, is no proof of their utter 
incapability of learning to write, and even to arrange 
their ideas ; but this in all probability would add nothing 
to the comfort and happiness of their lives, since it 

as well as we do theirs : and, following up the absurdity, we may 
call the Chinese beasts, because we do not understand them. — 
Montaigne. 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 53 

appears pretty plainly that all the useful knowledge and 
experience of former generations is handed down 
amongst them (as well as amongst men), in a manner not 
undeserving of the name of oral tradition ; for nothing 
can be more evident than the perfect understanding that 
is amongst them, and which is communicated most likely 
by signs as well as by sounds ; and for any thing we can 
ever know to the contrary, that tradition of their's may, 
in some respects, be more perfect than it is with man. 

Mod. — I cannot account for your apparent wish to 
undervalue the true rank of your own species, in the 
scale of animated being, while at the same time you 
cannot refrain from blaming them for exercising those 
powers of bodily strength or dexterity, which surely 
were not given them in vain, but intended by nature for 
their advantage against their enemies. If it is thus you 
mean to argue, it is wrong in principle, and in experience, 
for it is quite evident that if man had not, in some way 
or other, subdued the greater part of the land animals, 
they would have overrun, and exterminated his whole 
race ; so that his conduct herein is perfectly defensible on 
the strong ground of natural right. 

Strato. — Nothing can be further from my intention 
than to blame man for enforcing all his natural rights to 
secure his safety and subsistence ; and although I am one 



54 DIALOGUE. 

of the very few who are satisfied that nature never in- 
tended man should eat the flesh of animals ; yet it seems 
a very common order of things that one animal should 
live upon another ; and the only excuse that I can find 
for man's degeneracy in this particular, is the probability 
that he began to kill and eat animals in self-defence, to 
prevent his being devoured by them ; and as soon as he 
began to relish this diet, the priests with one consent 
made the discovery, that the gods were much better 
pleased with the grateful fumes of fat roasted beef or 
venison, than they were with those of myrrh and frankin- 
cense ; so these innocent and bloodless altars of primi- 
tive simplicity were forsaken for those of the knife and 
the bloody priest, who, on particular occasions required the 
immolation of human victims beneath his murderous hand;* 
nor would he have spared the gods themselves if they had 
been fat, and tangible. But what is most deserving of 
derision is, that silly fondness in man which makes him 



* The priests of antiquity declared that their wicked and inhu- 
man sacrifices were done by the express command of God. 

"This is the origin of all those sacrifices of human victims, which 
have disgraced almost every part of the world. What father or 
mother could act so contrary to every principle and feeling of 
nature, as to bring their son or daughter to the priest, to be sacrifi- 
ced upon the altar, if they had not been previously convinced, that 
the god of the country commanded the sacrifice to be made." 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 55 

believe and assert that all living creatures were made for 
his use ; whereas his true right to all such as he can 
subdue, either by force or dexterity, is precisely the 
same as that which lions or tigers have over their prey, 
that is, the right of conquest, and no more. To account 
for this conceited folly in men, we have only to consider 
the early impressions that have been made upon their 
minds by that long-robed class, whom they have the in- 
fatuation to maintain in sloth and idleness, under their 
own pretence of being the mediators between heaven 
and earth ; and while that idleness is supported by con- 
tinuing the pay, (for it is the pay that makes the priest), 
the indulged party will, in grateful return, never fail to 
make man the most favoured of all earthly creatures, by 
the supreme power ; and in doing this the theologian is 
sure to succeed, because he works upon the pride, the 
ignorance, and the selfishness of ninety-nine in every 
hundred of mankind, securing to himself thereby the fat 
of the land ; for the small voice of truth has always been 
disregarded when heard from the very few who worship 
her for her own sake. 

Mod. — I have listened to you with patience, and 
with a desire to elicit truth, but there are some of your 
opinions that appear singular, and too daring to deserve 
support ; and^ as I have already observed, whatever may 



56 DIALOGUE. 

be the subject in discussion, you are sure in the end to 
throw aspersions upon the sacerdotal order, and the 
superstitions of the people ; and therefore I beg leave 
again to divert your attention to other matters : — You 
have wholly denied the creation of matter, and you 
attribute the continual change of its forms, and new com- 
binations, to its own inherent powers of modification, 
acting by energies and impulses inseparable from itself? 
one of which is motion ; and that property, you say, is 
essential to it ; but who communicated the first motion 
to matter ? 

Strato. — If you allow that matter is eternal, (and 
this grand truth is admitted by all the ancient, and 
most of the modern philosophers) you preclude my 
allowing you what you call a first motion, and the sup- 
position would be illogical, after it is granted that matter 
is eternal, and motion essential to it, for then it follows 
that motion must be co-eternal with it. There can be no 
absolute rest for any portion of matter, and any 
change, whether organic or otherwise, cannot possibly 
be effected without motion. All things are so perpe- 
tually moved as to make it appear that there is a pro- 
cess and recess in infinitum, and although the series of 
changes that matter necessarily undergoes from motion, 
are eternal, yet no precise form of matter can be eternal, 



ST11AT0 AND MODEKATUS. 57 

all existing forms having been only renewed, or modified 
from the materials that had anteriorly constituted other 
forms ; and hence is derived the only rational idea that 
we can attach to the word creation. 

Mod. — There have always been, and still are so many 
thousands of conflicting opinions upon these subjects, as 
well as upon all sorts of religions, natural as well as 
those called revealed, that the impartial inquirer, who is 
in search of truth alone, is lost and bewildered in the 
endless mazes of controversy, and we are obliged to take 
shelter in Pyrrhonism at last. 

Strato. — Right reason is the best criterion of truth, 
and is a law befitting nature, extended to all, consistent 
with itself, plain to every capacity, and everlasting. I 
quite agree with you in the very proper observation you 
have made regarding the perfect order and harmony of 
the universe, which so pleasingly leads us to the belief 
that there does necessarily exist an all-sufficient, and 
eternal power in nature, which is properly the only 
object of the contemplation and admiration of mankind; 
and the religion arising from this source, and which is 
joined to the knowledge of nature, is the only religion 
that is rational, promoting peace and kindness amongst 
men, and requiring not the expense of an hireling priest- 
hood : — this is the religion of nature, and no other is 



58 DIALOGUE. 

calculated to pluck up the roots of error and superstition. 
But as for the numerous systems that have, and do still 
pretend to particular revelations, all different from, and 
opposed to each other, we have only to look at the fruit 
they have borne — the rivers of human blood that has 
been shed to support them against truth and reason. No 
sect amongst all these various inventions can brook a 
contradition, and much less endure that their doctrines 
should be charged with absurdity and falsehood, and 
their ceremonies with vanity and folly; for in these 
points the priests will proceed to a degree of fury and 
hatred against their antagonists that is hardly con- 
ceivable, for attacking their honesty and credit, and 
thereby endangering the very existence of those arts 
and illusions whereby they secure, in ease and affluence, 
the good things of the world, which mainly depend 
on the belief, or at least the acquiescence, which their 
preachings meet with. All things are sent them from 
heaven, although it is evident they are human inven- 
tions, superfluous, empty, and often ridiculous fictions, 
frequently so far pernicious as to be hurtful to virtue 
and public tranquility, as can be shown from history, 
and all experience. If it is objected that it is not pos- 
sible, that none of all their conflicting opinions should 
be true, it is at least equally impossible that more 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 59 

than one of them should be true. Their opponents, 
the Deists, on the other hand, who cannot agree to the 
ravings of theological theories, are abominated and 
persecuted ; the fierce devotee would have them pro- 
hibited fire and water whilst alive, and such is their 
implacable hatred that they would have them eternally 
tormented when dead, to effect which laudable and 
humane purpose, they have invented a suitable place 
for the end they had in view, Such has superstition 
ever been when vested in power and authority, and its 
cruelty and intolerance have always been commensurate 
with its power.* It is, therefore, the reason of nature, 
that every good and virtuous member of society should 
use all his endeavours to pluck out the teeth, if he 
cannot destroy this most pernicious of monsters, that 
has abused in a certain degree the ignorant credulity 
of mankind in all ages, and in a greater degree amongst 
the Christians ever since the second century. 



* In the true spirit of persecution, John Calvin, when armed 
with power, wrote to the high Chamberlain of the King of Navarre, 
of date the 30th Sept. 1561, thus : " Honor, glory, and riches, shall 
be the reward of your pains; but above all, do not fail to rid the 
country of those zealous scoundrels, who stir up the people to re- 
volt against us. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have 
exterminated Michael Servetus, the Spaniard." 

Vide Eccles. Researches, 



60 DIALOGUE. 

Mod. — By your own admission, antiquity will show 
that mankind have always been prone to superstition, — 
that they will stick by, and defend whatsoever sort of it 
was first imposed upon their minds ; and although the 
ground-work of the ever-varying religions was change- 
able, yet notions of a supernatural deity, or deities, 
entered into all of them ; nor can such indispensable 
apparatus be excluded from any religion that is calculated 
to foster the love of the marvellous, and the faith in 
prodigies, which is so much interwoven with human 
nature, — it is preternatural weapons and machinery alone 
that can act upon the hopes and fears of men in regard 
to a future state. Now, you would overturn the present 
fabric of theology, without substituting any thing in 
its room, to answer the above purpose, except the simple 
religion of nature and reason, which, by your own 
confession, cannot be appreciated by more than one in 
every hundred of mankind ; thus you would not only 
loosen, but altogether untie those bonds which churches 
and states, with united power, have found so necessary 
to govern society. 

Strato.— A very excellent philosopher informs us, 
that — "In Pennsylvania there is no religion established 
by the government; every person adopts the one he 
likes best, — the priest is no charge to the state, — the 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 61 

individuals provide for them as they find it convenient, 
and tax themselves accordingly; the priest is there, 
like the merchant, maintained at the expense of the 
consumer ; — he who has no priest, and consumes no part 
of the commodity he deals in, pays no part of his 
expense. Pennsylvania is a model for other nations." 

In like manner I would have all religions, except 
that of nature and reason (which requires no hireling 
priests), made marketable commodities, so that every 
votary, or consumer, might supply himself at that 
preaching shop, where the article best suited his fancy, 
and there to pay the vender for the quantity purchased. 
This would be fair and reasonable. But to support the 
present profligate superstition, authority comes to stand 
in the place of reason, and is the natural result of the 
evil of having an established religion ; and then comes 
the tenfold evil of the adulterous connection between 
that religion and the state, confirmed by laws which 
were no doubt procured through the immense wealth 
and power of the clergy in former times, when they 
secured to themselves peculiar privileges and immuni- 
ties ; and by the strength of that common interest, which 
is exclusively their own, and is the strongest imagin- 
able, they formed a distinct state within the political 
state, in almost every nation in Europe, and these 



62 DIALOGUE. 

sacerdotal states being firmly united, although at a 
distance from each other, were often formidable to the 
civil governments of Europe ; and where they bear 
sway and rule in the executive of any nation, as at 
present they do in Spain and Portugal, that nation is 
doomed to the most abject slavery, to ignorance, weak- 
ness, degradation, and the contempt of other nations. 
Witness the present condition of the two countries 
above mentioned, where the two millstones of knavery 
and folly will grind on till some rational powers of 
genius shall start up, and rouse the people from their 
sloth and stupidity. 

Mod. — In every age and in every country of the 
world, there have always been religions of some sort or 
other, and of course there must have been priests 
attached to all of them, to administer and expound; 
and when men of learning are set apart for a public 
office, a public expense will be incurred for their 
maintenance. 

Strato. — The inference you draw from the position 
laid down, is quite correct ; but have the mass of man- 
kind in any age or country, ever freely and impartially 
ventured to examine into the reputed necessity, or 
whether there is really any indispensable obligation on 
their part to support such establishments, which the 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 63 

very few in every country, who are capable of just and 
wise reflections, know to be wholly illusory; and thus 
to encourage idleness and luxury in this numerous class 
of men, who eat up such an unconscionable share of the 
earnings of industry ; while a vast portion of that 
property which ought to form part of the resources of 
the state, is ingulfed and squandered upon bishops, and 
other dignitaries, who profess to be patterns of all that 
is humble, poor, and self-denying, yet whose lives 
generally, are so many examples of the full-blown vices 
that stand in natural opposition to the virtues they 
profess ; and it is through their powerful influence, the 
better to support that glare and pomp which dazzles the 
weak vulgar, that the land is groaning with churches in 
every corner,* with their heaven-directed spires, and 



* To build churches and temples, says Zeno Citticus, is no 
way necessary, for nothing ought to be accounted sacred by right, 
or esteemed holy, which men themselves erect ; neither among 
the Persians of old, nor among the primitive Hebrews, were there 
any temples dedicated to divine service, till at last one was founded 
by Solomon, for which he is reproved by the prophet Isaiah. 
Cornelius Agrippa also observes, that amongst the Gentiles there 
were some very eminent for the structures of their temples ; but 
others there were who never made use of any, of which number 
was Xerxes, who is reported to have burnt all the temples of the 
lesser Asia, at the request of his magicians, esteeming it no less 
than impiety to enclose the gods in walls. 



64 DIALOGUE. 

all the other expensive and imposing decorations, so 
well calculated to over-awe those who have been taught 
to think what others think ; not how to think for them- 
selves. All this, taken together, composes the enormous 
fabric, called generally, the Church, at first invented by- 
Priests, in league with tyrants, supported from the 
labour and sweat of the people, and dedicated to 
theologic visions and chimeras. 

Mod. — With all your strange hostility to churches 
and their decorations, you never can make it appear 
that the people derive no real benefit or advantage from 
them ; for even if we lay aside the obligation of their 
divine institution, the mere erection of them diffuses 
wealth, and affords employment for the necessitous, who 
might otherwise be destitute; and besides this grand 
object, we ought to make due allowance for the orna- 
ment and grandeur which cities and towns receive from 
such public buildings. 

Strato. — What hinders men from combining what 
is nationally beneficial with the agreeable and the orna- 
mental ? Can we conceive any thing of greater utility, 
and at the same time more ornamental than the cultiva- 
tion of waste lands, — the conversion of those unprofitable 
wildernesses into so many beautiful fields and gardens, 
all conducive to the health and subsistence of man ? In 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 65 

England, the prodigious expense lavished upon the 
monuments of superstition, in the shape of churches, 
together with the church lands and revenues of those 
fatlings, the dignitaries, would alone have turned a vast 
portion of the waste lands in the kingdom, into culti- 
vated and fruitful fields, and intersected many convenient 
parts of it with useful canals, and defrayed the expense 
of other national works of unquestionable utility ; whilst 
our ' tithe pigs metropolitan,'* with their trains of 
subaltern drones, would have been taught to follow up 
the intentions of nature, by labouring for their sub- 
sistence in the cultivation of mother earth, or other 
employment that would be really useful in society. 
You have said that this order of men are not to be 
blamed for living by a trade that is generally considered 
as being indispensably necessary : — be it so, but I say 
again, let those alone bear the expense who are silly 
enough to be led to believe that such institutions are at 
all important or useful to humanity, abolishing all 
established, or state religions, leaving every man at 

* ' Fleury informs us that, in the early periods of Christianity, all 
the clergy, even to the bishops, lived after a poor, at least a plain 
and ordinary manner. St Jerome highly disapproved of the dis- 
tinction of bishops and priests, or curates. He asserted that, 
according to St Paul, they were the same thing, till by the in- 
stigation of the devil, there were ranks, or distinctions in religion.* 



66 DIALOGUE. 

liberty to pay his priest (if he keeps one) as it suits his 
will and convenience; and then the article vended by 
the preacher, will find its intrinsic value in the market. 
To render Ireland nourishing and happy, nothing is so 
much wanted at this moment, as the abolition of all 
favoured, or established religion, and a free trade granted 
in theology. 

Mod. — The church itself has always insisted on the 
absolute obligation that states and communities are 
under, by the fiat of heaven, to settle permanent re- 
venues for the maintenance of the clergy, and for the 
support of respectability generally, as well as to set the 
whole concern above any danger that might proceed 
from the alienation of the minds of men from its creeds 
and dictates ; and without some such independent pro- 
vision, I do not see how any church could stand against 
the increasing numbers of those who are declared ene- 
mies to all the systems of revealed religion. 

Strato. — The most formidable enemies of all those 
religions which pretend to revelation, and the most 
daring exposures of their absurd dogmas, have come from 
amongst those who were educated for the church, many 
of whom refused to take orders at all; and others, from a 
rare honesty and tenderness of conscience, abandoned 
the profession altogether, refusing longer to be supported 



A- 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 67 

by an avocation which they considered to be, in no small 
degree, inconsistent with truth and good morals; the 
supernatural part of it, which is nearly the whole, being 
a practical imposition upon the weak-minded portion of 
mankind. This self-denial, and virtuous dignity of mind 
in those individuals, arose from the rare coincidence of 
certain moral qualities, — viz., an incorruptible love of 
truth, integrity of heart, with learning and genius 
sufficient to distinguish between truth and falsehood. 
In speaking of the ill effects and irrationality of national 
churches, it must be readily allowed that there are many 
good and virtuous men belonging to the clerical order ; 
and although it cannot well be doubted that thousands 
of them hold the same opinions that the honest infidels 
hold, yet this is somewhat excusable when we consider 
how society is constituted, and that falsehood is the 
present goddess thereof; consequently, being thus sanc- 
tioned, most of men will think themselves warranted in 
leaving conscience out of the question, when an easy and 
comfortable subsistence can be obtained by means which 
they judge of no more concern than a temporal conveni- 
ence. This is speaking of the subordinate functionaries 
of the church, but how much more will those high digni- 
taries exert all their powers by every stratagem to reduce 
men's reason to those particular opinions which alone 

JL. * ' * 



68 DIALOGUE. 

support clerical greatness, and by which they fish for 
their own profit and glory with so easy a bait as the 
gullibility of the multitude ; whilst by the united energies 
of all, and the designing knavery of the greatest number 
of their body, they will use the most strenuous endeavours 
to secure themselves in the advantages arising from these 
abuses, until men shall begin to open their eyes, and the 
free exercise of truth and reason shall burst the mighty 
bubble.* 

Mod. — The immense riches of the church, which 
constitutes its power, — the number, the learning, and 
the common interest of the clergy, will support it in 
perpetuity against all the innovations of reason and 
natural religion ; but there is yet another sustaining 
power which will never fail to stand by it so long as 
mankind shall be propagated — I mean the devotion of the 
female sex, for whatsoever may be the system of theology, 
or revealed religion, that prevails in any country, the 
female mind clings to it without the slightest examina- 

* " The wealth of nations has hitherto been wasted in the service 
of superstition, of vanity, or in accomplishing the destructive objects 
of ambition, but happily the power of superstition is gradually 
declining in the world ; yet still a numerous class of idlers are 
aggrandized by it, and while that continues, it may again bring upon ' 
free nations, whether victorious or vanquished, the greatest of all 
calamities, the loss of freedom, and of public and private virtues." 



STRATO AND MODERATUS. 69 

tion, with devotedness and fervour, exercising at the 
same time so subtle an influence over the weaker part of 
the male sex, that I confess having some doubts on my 
mind whether any one of all those religions pretending 
to revelation would stand for twenty years, without this 
never-failing prop; for it is equally important in all 
superstitions, in all countries. A learned clergyman, in 
writing to a female friend, makes this remark, — "if, 
indeed, your sex should enter into the irreligious notions, 
which now prevail too much among men, the next 
generation would be irrecoverably lost," which is as 
much as to confess that the church is in no danger 
while it holds its deep-rooted impulsive power over the 
female mind. 

Strato. — I quite agree with the learned divine you 
have quoted, and his observation applies not only to the 
church of England, but to all fabrics of superstition 
grounded upon particular revelations ; for nothing can be 
more notorious than that women have, in all ages, been 
the upholders of superstition ; owing in the first place, to 
" their very nature, which is more weak and fearful than 
the nature and disposition of men," (so says Hippocrates) ; 
and, secondly, to the fanciful and timorous notion of the 
superintendence of spiritual powers that are beyond the 
pale of nature ; to which may be added, the gaudy and 



70 DIALOGUE. 

imposing pomp of ceremonies, all of which, taken 
together, render the female mind as it were, a softer and 
more pliant wax to receive the theological impression. 
And hence it is that the zeal and devotion of the ladies 
for their respective religions, appear to be exactly the 
same amongst the Pagans, Jews and Mahometans, as it 
is throughout the Christian world. Strabo makes the 
following strong remark, — " It is a thing universally 
taken for granted, that women are the ringleaders of 
superstition ; they tease their husbands into all sorts of 
worship of the gods, into the observation of feasts and 
fasts; but it is a rare thing that any man, leading a 
single life, is found to be such a person" 

I shall close my authorities on this subject, with a 
quotation from the learned Selden. " When priests 
come into a family," says he, " they do as a man that 
would set fire to a house, — he does not put fire to the 
brick wall, but puts it into the thatch ; — they work upon 
the women, and let the men alone" 



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